Tony Greenstein's Blog

Israel’s Torture of Palestinian Children

2012-01-25T11:47:00.009Z

The Beasts of Al Jalame – Electric Shocks Help the Children to Co-operate

It prides itself on being ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ with the world’s ‘most moral army’ but like all armies of occupation there is little that they are not capable of when it comes to violating basic human rights. And after 45 years they have honed their expertise in cruelty down to a fine art.

But even the animals that make up Israel’s Occupation Forces have excelled themselves in devising methods of torture of Palestinian children. Not merely striking, shackling, using electric shock torture, stress positions etc. In other words the normal methods of torture used by the occupation forces. Children are also imprisoned in isolation for weeks and months. Solitary confinement is, in itself, a form of torture as is the use of sleep deprivation.

And if not satisfied with their hidden methods of cruelty, the children are brought into court shackled and chained, like armed convicts. But it is in accordance with the law, according to Israel’s equivalent of Dr Goebbels, Mark Regev.

So a simple question. When was the last time that Jewish children were imprisoned in solitary confinement and beaten for having thrown stones? As the report of the demonstrations in Beit Shemesh against the attempts of Orthodox Jews to segregate the sexes and make young girls dress ‘modestly’, in response to attacks on an 8 year old girl Naama, ‘extremists have heckled and thrown eggs and rocks at journalists descending on town.’

Yet the Police haven’t arrested and thrown into solitary confinement even the adult stone throwers. Unlike the West Bank, live ammunition isn’t used against the demonstrators, on the contrary. Orthodox demonstrators in Jerusalem and elsewhere are treated with kid gloves. Perhaps more than anything else, this demonstrates the inherent racism in Israeli society (since live ammunition is used against Israeli Arabs’ demonstrations).

This also throws into question the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In Nazi Germany the Red Cross were used to provide a seal of approval for the concentration camp system by allowing itself to be shown round the 'model' camp at Thereinstadt (most of the inmates had been shipped to Auschwitz). They likewise visited the Czech children's camp at Auschwitz, which was exterminated shortly after the visit. Israel is now using the IHRC, like the Americans did at Guantanamo, to 'kosher' the torture of children. Hard questions need to be asked about the Red Cross, and their pledge not to reveal details of what they see, when the torturers use them as an alibi.

Tony Greenstein

The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel's Al Jalame jail

Special report: Israel's military justice system is accused of mistreating Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones

Harriet Sherwood in the West Bank 23rd January 2012

The room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night.

This is Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel. It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days.

The only escape is to the interrogation room where children are shackled, by hands and feet, to a chair while being questioned, sometimes for hours.

Most are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers; some, of flinging molotov cocktails; a few, of more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. They are also pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.

At the beginning, nearly all deny the accusations. Most say they are threatened; some report physical violence. Verbal abuse – "You're a dog, a son of a whore" – is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions that they later say were coerced.
These claims and descriptions come from affidavits given by minors to an international human rights organisation and from interviews conducted by the Guardian. Other cells in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva prisons are also used for solitary confinement, but Cell 36 is the one cited most often in these testimonies.

Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli soldiers each year, mostly accused of throwing stones. Since 2008, Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected sworn testimonies from 426 minors detained in Israel's military justice system.
Their statements show a pattern of night-time arrests, hands bound with plastic ties, blindfolding, physical and verbal abuse, and threats. About 9% of all those giving affidavits say they were kept in solitary confinement, although there has been a marked increase to 22% in the past six months.

Few parents are told where their children have been taken. Minors are rarely questioned in the presence of a parent, and rarely see a lawyer before or during initial interrogation. Most are detained inside Israel, making family visits very difficult.

Human rights organisations say these patterns of treatment – which are corroborated by a separate study, No Minor Matter, conducted by an Israeli group, B'Tselem – violate the international convention on the rights of the child, which Israel has ratified, and the fourth Geneva convention.

Most children maintain they are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused, despite confessions and guilty pleas, said Gerard Horton of DCI. But, he added, guilt or innocence was not an issue with regard to their treatment.

"We're not saying offences aren't committed – we're saying children have legal rights. Regardless of what they're accused of, they should not be arrested in the middle of the night in terrifying raids, they should not be painfully tied up and blindfolded sometimes for hours on end, they should be informed of the right to silence and they should be entitled to have a parent present during questioning."
Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm was arrested last January, aged 16, at about 2.30am. "Four soldiers entered my bedroom and said you must come with us. They didn't say why, they didn't tell me or my parents anything," he told the Guardian.

Handcuffed with a plastic tie and blindfolded, he thinks he was first taken to an Israeli settlement, where he was made to kneel – still cuffed and blindfolded – for an hour on an asphalt road in the freezing dead of night. A second journey ended at about 8am at Al Jalame detention centre, also known as Kishon prison, amid fields close to the Nazareth to Haifa road.

After a routine medical check, Shabrawi was taken to Cell 36. He spent 17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations, there and in a similar cell, No 37, he said. "I was lonely, frightened all the time and I needed someone to talk with. I was choked from being alone. I was desperate to meet anyone, speak to anyone … I was so bored that when I was out [of the cell] and saw the police, they were talking in Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew, but I was nodding as though I understood. I was desperate to speak."

During interrogation, he was shackled. "They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn't confess," he said. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 days. "They accused me of many things," he said, adding that none of them were true.

Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release, he said, he was "now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested." His mother said he had become withdrawn.

Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38.

"I would start repeating the interrogators' questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of," he told the Guardian. "You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress."

His treatment during questioning depended on the mood of his interrogators, he said. "If he is in a good mood, sometimes he allows you to sit on a chair without handcuffs. Or he may force you to sit on a small chair with an iron hoop behind it. Then he attaches your hands to the ring, and your legs to the chair legs. Sometimes you stay like that for four hours. It is painful.

"Sometimes they make fun of you. They ask if you want water, and if you say yes they bring it, but then the interrogator drinks it."

Ali Qadi did not see his parents during the 51 days he was detained before trial, he said, and was only allowed to see a lawyer after 10 days. He was accused of throwing stones and planning military operations, and after confessing was sentenced to six months in prison.The Guardian has affidavits from five other juveniles who said they were detained in solitary confinement in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva. All confessed after interrogation.

"Solitary confinement breaks the spirit of a child," said Horton. "Children say that after a week or so of this treatment, they confess simply to get out of the cell."

The Israeli security agency (ISA) – also known as Shin Bet – told the Guardian: "No one questioned, including minors, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession."

The Israeli prison service did not respond to a specific question about solitary confinement, saying only "the incarceration of prisoners…is subject to legal examination".

Juvenile detainees also allege harsh interrogation methods. The Guardian interviewed the father of a minor serving a 23-month term for throwing rocks at vehicles. Ali Odwan, from Azzun, said his son Yahir, who was 14 when he was arrested, was given electric shocks by a Taser while under interrogation.

"I visited my son in jail. I saw marks from electric shocks on both his arms, they were visible from behind the glass. I asked him if it was from electric shocks, he just nodded. He was afraid someone was listening," Odwan said.

DCI has affidavits from three minors accused of throwing stones who claim they were given electric shocks under interrogation in 2010.

Another Azzun youngster, Sameer Saher, was 13 when he was arrested at 2am. "A soldier held me upside down and took me to a window and said: 'I want to throw you from the window.' They beat me on the legs, stomach, face," he said.

His interrogators accused him of stone-throwing and demanded the names of friends who had also thrown stones. He was released without charge about 17 hours after his arrest. Now, he said, he has difficulty sleeping for fear "they will come at night and arrest me".
In response to questions about alleged ill-treatment, including electric shocks, the ISA said: "The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless … Investigators act in accordance with the law and unequivocal guidelines which forbid such actions."
The Guardian has also seen rare audiovisual recordings of the interrogations of two boys, aged 14 and 15, from the village of Nabi Saleh, the scene of weekly protests against nearby settlers. Both are visibly exhausted after being arrested in the middle of the night. Their interrogations, which begin at about 9.30am, last four and five hours.

Neither is told of their legal right to remain silent, and both are repeatedly asked leading questions, including whether named people have incited them to throw stones. At one point, as one boy rests his head on the table, the interrogator flicks at him, shouting: "Lift your head, you." During the other boy's interrogation, one questioner repeatedly slams a clenched fist into his own palm in a threatening gesture. The boy breaks down in tears, saying he was due to take an exam at school that morning. "They're going to fail me, I'm going to lose the year," he sobs.

In neither case was a lawyer present during their interrogation.

Israeli military law has been applied in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory more than 44 years ago. Since then, more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under military orders.

Under military order 1651, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and children under the age of 14 face a maximum of six months in prison.

However, children aged 14 and 15 could, in theory, be sentenced up to 20 years for throwing an object at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm. In practice, most sentences range between two weeks and 10 months, according to DCI.

In September 2009, a special juvenile military court was established. It sits at Ofer, a military prison outside Jerusalem, twice a week. Minors are brought into court in leg shackles and handcuffs, wearing brown prison uniforms. The proceedings are in Hebrew with intermittent translation provided by Arabic-speaking soldiers.

The Israeli prison service told the Guardian that the use of restraints in public places was permitted in cases where "there is reasonable concern that the prisoner will escape, cause damage to property or body, or will damage evidence or try to dispose of evidence".

The Guardian witnessed a case this month in which two boys, aged 15 and 17, admitted entering Israel illegally, throwing molotov cocktails and stones, starting a fire which caused extensive damage, and vandalising property. The prosecution asked for a sentence to reflect the defendants' "nationalistic motives" and to act as a deterrent.

The older boy was sentenced to 33 months in jail; the younger one, 26 months. Both were sentenced to an additional 24 months suspended and were fined 10,000 shekels (£1,700). Failure to pay the fine would mean an additional 10 months in prison.

Several British parliamentary delegations have witnessed child hearings at Ofer over the past year. Alf Dubs reported back to the House of Lords last May, saying: "We saw a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewildered … I do not believe this process of humiliation represents justice. I believe that the way in which these young people are treated is in itself an obstacle to the achievement by Israel of a peaceful relationship with the Palestinian people."

Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who witnessed the trial of a shackled 14-year-old at Ofer last month, found the experience distressing. "In five minutes he had been found guilty of stone-throwing and was sentenced to nine months. It was shocking to see a child being put through this process. It's difficult to see how a [political] solution can be reached when young people are being treated in this manner. They end up with very little hope for their future and very angry about their treatment."

Horton said a guilty plea was "the quickest way to get out of the system". If the children say their confession was coerced, "that provides them with a legal defence – but because they're denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty".

An expert opinion written by Graciela Carmon, a child psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Human Rights, in May 2011, said that children were particularly vulnerable to providing a false confession under coercion.

"Although some detainees understand that providing a confession, despite their innocence, will have negative repercussions in the future, they nevertheless confess as the immediate mental and/or physical anguish they feel overrides the future implications, whatever they may be."
Nearly all the cases documented by DCI ended in a guilty plea and about three-quarters of the convicted minors were transferred to prisons inside Israel. This contravenes article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention, which requires children and adults in occupied territories to be detained within the territory.

The Israeli defence forces (IDF), responsible for arrests in the West Bank and the military judicial system said last month that the military judicial system was "underpinned by a commitment to ensure the rights of the accused, judicial impartiality and an emphasis on practising international legal norms in incredibly dangerous and complex situations".

The ISA said its employees acted in accordance with the law, and detainees were given the full rights for which they were eligible, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross. "The ISA categorically denies all claims with regard to the interrogation of minors. In fact, the complete opposite is true – the ISA guidelines grant minors special protections needed because of their age."

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the Guardian: "If detainees believe they have been mistreated, especially in the case of minors … it's very important that these people, or people representing them, come forward and raise these issues. The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors."

Stone-throwing, he added, was a dangerous activity that had resulted in the deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son last year.

"Rock-throwing, throwing molotov cocktails and other forms of violence is unacceptable, and the security authorities have to bring it to an end when it happens."
Human rights groups are concerned about the long-term impact of detention on Palestinian minors. Some children initially exhibit a degree of bravado, believing it to be a rite of passage, said Horton. "But when you sit with them for an hour or so, under this veneer of bravado are children who are fairly traumatised." Many of them, he said, never want to see another soldier or go near a checkpoint. Does he think the system works as a deterrent? "Yes, I think it does."

According to Nader Abu Amsha, the director of the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, which runs a rehabilitation programme for juveniles, "families think that when the child is released, it's the end of the problem. We tell them this is the beginning".

Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bedwetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation.

The Israeli authorities should consider the long-term effects, said Abu Amsha. "They don't give attention to how this might continue the vicious cycle of violence, of how this might increase hatred. These children come out of this process with a lot of anger. Some of them feel the need for revenge.

"You see children who are totally broken. It's painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system."

Hypocrites (Harry’s) Place Carries BNP Style Posts Whilst Condemning PSC

2012-01-25T04:29:00.006Z

Decision to Ban Holocaust Denial and anti-Semitism Bamboozles Harry’s Place

Or perhaps I should call it Hypocrites Place. Following the decision of PSC to expel one holocaust denier and confirm a ban on holocaust denial or anti-Semitism, Hypocrites Place is finding it difficult to get its message right.

On the one hand, there is resident liberal Sarah’s (all things are relative) Holocaust denier’s appeal fails to impress the PSC before managing to agree with her ultra-Zionist comrades. Then there is foaming at the mouth Joseph W who is obsessed by the 20% (in fact 17%) who didn’t vote to expel Francis Clarke-Lowes. Facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way of a good (or in this case bad) story, so this becomes 20% of PSC approve of holocaust denial.

Of course a child of 10 could work out that because you don’t want to expel someone, it doesn’t mean that you agree with them. When I pointed this rather obvious point out on HP, I discovered that the post soon disappeared. It was the first of three posts, so it wasn't - contrary to Sarah's suggestion - one of these things that happens in the ether. I had hit too close to home.

In particular I had illustrated what I was saying with a simple example. So simple that even the Hypocrites Place could get their heads around it. When I was a student, it was the Jewish or rather Zionist society at Sussex University, led by one David Cohen, which had opposed No Platform for Fascists and Racists, on the grounds of freedom of speech.

Of course Zionists have never been keen on things like anti-fascism but we never suggested that all or most of the Zionist Society were therefore signed up fascist supporters. They simply preferred supporting Israel and opposing anti-Zionism to fighting anti-Semitism and opposing fascism. So why should those who voted against Clarke-Lowes expulsion, primarily Stalinists of a bizarre North Korean loving cult, be classified as holocaust deniers when they have explicitly denied such a charge? Doesn’t make sense except for HPers who inhabit a parallel universe where the normal rules of logic don't apply.

HP’s problem is that if Zionism = anti-Semitism PSC is already anti-Semitic. So why then should PSC take the time and trouble to formulate a policy on anti-Semitism and holocaust denial? Doesn't make sense. Hence why it is easier to ban me from posting than answering awkward questions.

And there I was thinking that HP actually meant it when they quoted George Orwell to the effect that ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear.’ Of course Orwell was a socialist and anti-fascist. He fought with the semi-Trotskyist POUM in Spain but of course he was also an anti-Stalinist, not a crazy US neo-con.

HP now seem to have reinterpreted Orwell to the effect that ‘Liberty doesn’t mean telling Harry’s Hypocritical Place what they definitely don’t want to hear’ i.e. the truth!

I therefore sought an answer to this conundrum. Unless HPers are natural born liars, how can one explain this glaring contradiction between the banner headline and day to day practice? So I went off in search of HP’s comments policy, which only confused me even further. Under ‘Freedom of Speech’ we are told that HP:

‘believes in freedom of speech and open debate… It is our conviction that adults in a free society can discuss ideas openly without, generally speaking, the need for policing. We do not delete comments simply because we do not agree with them. We want a vibrant marketplace of ideas, not an echo chamber. It should be kept in mind however that marketplaces can at times be loud and chaotic. It is our conviction that the best way to deal with contrary views – even objectionable ones – is to challenge them, to argue, to criticise them or, in some cases, to treat them with contempt by ignoring them. This is how a free society functions…. it is better that a bad idea is exposed to the light of day. We cannot prepare ourselves for ideological battles against ideas that lurk in shadow and are transmitted in whispers.’

Fine sentiments indeed. Well that is clear then. HP is opposed to banning people ‘simply because we do not agree with them.’ Yet according to reliable reports HP has been subject of a US neo-con takeover, so like most things of the American Right, it has preserved the form whilst gutting it of all substance. Theoretically HP doesn't ban people because of their ideas. In practice it has no choice given the level of debate and the quality of most of the posters.

But whilst I have been banned, a Zionist poster Lamia was able to post the following comment to Joseph's The national PSC on Holocaust denial and Gill Kaffash

In response to a comment about ‘The UK has the problem of the British colonial attitudes to their former colonies. Actually Fabian, we have the problem of their attitudes to us.’ We have the following outpouring of racist filth:

‘Including Jews. The Pakistani immigrant population alone have contributed a great deal to the anti-Semitic ‘culture’ of the country. The jury’s out on whether they’ve contribute much else. Oh yes, I forgot: white-child prostitution rings. How wonderfully multicultural.’

Contrast this with e.g. the BNP's Northern Ireland site. This too has a feature on white child prostitution with the banner headline ‘Nick Griffin has said it for years… now the media admits that Muslim Paedophile Gangs can no longer be ignored.’ Plus ca change.

Just as Hitler held that Jews were out to corrupt innocent Aryan girls, so HP’s contributors now label, BNP style, the Pakistani community as being responsible for (white) child prostitution rings. But whereas Lamia is welcome to continue posting his vile racist outpourings, with barely a tutter from people like the fragrant Sarah, anti-Zionist critics are regularly libelled and now banned for daring to provide an alternative analysis.

Actually I don't give Sarah credit where credit is due. After saying that 'Lamia – I’m not denying that antisemitism is more associated with some communities than others' (really? I do you mean Muslims or non-whites in general?) she goes on to protest 'but that seems a rather sweeping thing to say about people in the UK of Pakistani origin.'

Err yes, quite. It is rather sweeping. How about Jews are responsible for most financial crimes. Would that also be 'rather too sweeping' despite the fact that certain groups (Jews) are more associated with 'swindling' than others? Please do tell.

Tony Greenstein

PSC AGM – A Crushing Defeat For Gilad Atzmon and the Anti-Semites

2012-01-22T01:04:00.009Z

Holocaust denier Frances Clarke-Lowes Expelled by Massive Majority

The 30th Conference of PSC promised to be one of the more controversial PSC AGMs and it certainly lived up to it. Entering the conference, who was there giving out blue badges commemorating the massacre at Deir Yassin, but the eminence grise of the holocaust deniers, Paul Eisen - neo-Nazi apologist extraordinaire.

Despite his fulminations against what he calls ‘Zionism’ Eisen is remarkably similar to them. The Zionists exploit the holocaust for their own purposes and Eisen exploits the massacre of Palestinians for his own purposes, i.e. denial of the holocaust and rehabilitation of the Nazis.

The first item on the agenda was a closed session at which the appeal of Frances Clarke Lowes against his expulsion was to be heard. Last April, Francis declared on the Brighton & Hove PSC Discussion List that he was proud to be a holocaust denier. For his pains he was expelled from Brighton PSC and not one voice was raised in his defence in Brighton PSC. I reported his statement to the Executive and sometime in May he was also expelled from national PSC. Francis however had the right of appeal to the national conference and chose to exercise that right.

The speech is printed, in a highly edited version, on (who else?) Gilad Atzmon’s site.

It is fair to say that Clarke-Lowes speech did him no favours. It was extremely anti-Semitic, talking about the ‘Jewish narrative’ and speaking about Jews as a group with common properties. He openly stated that the holocaust was a myth (something Atzmon has not included in his version of the speech). People literally gasped as they heard him describe the holocaust as a ‘myth’ and a number of people told me that if he hadn't been expelled they would have resigned.

The speech from the Executive, from Hugh Lanning, was superb, moving and to the point. It ended by asking conference not to let evil enter our hearts. Conference upheld the expulsion by 165 vote to 35 with 6 abstension. A couple of days ago I had sent an e-mail to the Secretary of PSC, Ben Sofa, saying that in my opinion a majority was not good enough, we needed at least a 3-1 majority. In the end we got 5-1. In fact it was considerably more because I had not realised that the zany Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist Leninist, the followers of the hereditary oligarchy otherwise known as the ‘socialist state of North Korea’ had taken a decision to oppose any condemnation of holocaust denial. Their amendment to the Executive’s Motion 2 read:

‘This AGM resolves that PSC’s chief focus shall remain that of building support for Palestine and Palestinians and against zionism and imperialism. It is not the PSC’s job to act as thought police on behalf of zionism and imperialism, and we refuse to ask the Palestinians to bend their narrative to one that is acceptable to zionist ears.’

That so-called communists, led by Harpal Brar and his daughter Joti Brar, think that the Palestinian narrative includes holocaust denial or that there is any contradiction between opposing the denial of the holocaust and opposing imperialism and Zionism is truly amazing. But as Harpal Brar made clear in a subsequent speech he cast no doubt on the fact of the holocaust.

In other words most of those who voted against Clarke-Lowes’ expulsion, did so despite his views on the holocaust and primarily as part of a wider disagreement with PSC Executive. And since they brought virtually all of their membership of about 20 to the conference, it is clear even that that stage that those who had any sympathy with Clarke-Lowes were a tiny handful.

After the lunch break we had a guest speaker, Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian Boycott National Committee. He detailed the increasingly open racism of the state, its attacks on the memory of the Nakba, which has been made unlawful, the shameful decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the Citizenship Law which prevents Israeli Arabs from living with their spouse in side Israel.

It must have been a shock when Omar went out of his way to make it clear that anti-Semitism and holocaust denial were no part of the politics of the Palestinians. ‘Ours is an anti-racist cause’ he stated, in case anyone had failed to decipher the meaning of the speech. He generously paid tribute to PSC as the world’s most effective solidarity organisation and to Britain for leading the way in Boycott. It is a compliment that are indebted to honour and repay.

After Omar’s speech the Executive motion 2 and that from Naomi Wimborne Idrissi were taken, along with all 3 amendments from Gill Kaffash/Rosemary Earnshaw, Exeter PSC and the CPGB-ML (above). All the amendments were heavily defeated with less than 20 votes out of over 250 delegates (the votes in the Executive elections indicate there must have been an increase in people arriving by at least 50). Harpal Brar was the only person to speak with any passion or conviction for the amendments. And to his credit he made it clear that of course he accepted that fact of the holocaust without reservation but that there were a number of other acts of genocide we should condemn – that of the Armenians for example, the Iraqis and others. In other words he was speaking agains the Zionists' holocaust exceptionalism - the idea that the holocaust of Jews is unique. I agree.

Even Gill Kaffash chose not to mention anything to do with holocaust and instead mounted a free speech argument, coupled with the assertion that we stick to Palestine not extraneous issues. But speaker after speaker, with the exception of Exeter PSC’s constitutionalist Dave Chappell (FBU), made it clear that it was not possible oppose the racism that Palestinians suffer from and yet tolerate holocaust deniers and their associates. A member of the Communications Workers Union, whose name I didn’t catch, made this clear in a particularly impassioned contribution, as did Roland Rance from Jews 4 Boycotting Israeli Goods and other speakers.

In the end both the Executive Motion and the one from J-Big were passed with barely 10 votes, if that, against. A humiliating and crushing defeat for the Atzmonites and holocaust deniers in the movement. In my own speech I quoted Atzmon’s statement that Jews who speak as ‘ethnic’ Jews, i.e. who are Jewish simply reinforced Zionism. I asked how is it that people agreed when UNISON passed boycott policy in 2007, that I should speak as someone who is Jewish precisely in order to take head on the Zionist lies that to support the Palestinians is anti-Semitic? I never received an answer from Atzmon’s few supporters. Nor will I. Because the growing number of Jews who are breaking from Zionism, partially or completely, has been growing, especially in the United States. Only the Zionists and the Atzmonites deplore this phenomenon.

It is the Zionists' supporters - be it the EDL and BNP in this country - or John Hagee of Christians United for Israel - who described Hitler as god's messenger sent to drive the Jews to Israel, who are the real anti-Semites, and on this of course Harry's Place is silent.

Many other motions were also passed including one on the disgraceful attacks on Palestinian children by the Israeli military. It is to the eternal shame of the West that they have nothing to say about the shackling and torture of children even, to say nothing of the shackling of Palestinian women prisoners, even while they are giving birth.

There were discussions about the growing successes of the boycott movement, in particular the loss of a £500m contract for Veolia in West London and tribute was paid to Angus Geddes for his sterling work in this area. The closure of Ahava, the Israeli store that traded in stolen goods was also highlighted as was the Judaification of the Negev. Bernard Regan in particular spoke well on the latter and his experiences when visiting Israel with a delegation.

This is also the 30th anniversary of the foundation of PSC and a motion was passed mandating the Executive to organise series of fundraising activities and celebrations. When you consider what we have had to battle against to build an organisation that has now achieved over 5,000 members, then this is indeed a success and tribute was paid to faithful stalwarts like Jeremy Corbyn MP, Baroness Jenny Tonge and Bruce Kent. It is a measure of our success that when I first became involved in Palestinian politics Gerald Kaufman and Tony Benn were both members of Labour Friends of Israel. Today Gerald Kaufman has sponsored an Early Day Motion with Jeremy Corbyn on the racist Jewish National Fund.

And conference also made us, including myself, realise, that whatever disagreements we may have with the Executive, what we have in common is far greater than that which divides us. For the first time ever I even voted for Bernard Regan for the Executive and he accused me of stealing his lines! A special mention should be made of Ben Sofa, the Secretary, who has never wavered in his support for tackling the issue head on.

Because the Executive realised that if the holocaust deniers had got their way, the trade unions – with their history of fighting fascism – would have disaffiliated and we would be a cacophony of noise without influence. Those who argued that we should concentrate on Palestine and Palestinians failed to recognise that that means you must politically engage with the mainstream of society and that you have, at all costs, not to hand your opponents weapons to attack you with.

People were angry at the constant misrepresentation of Palestinian activists you see on sites like Harry’s Place, a place where only rabid Zionists with cloth ears venture. However it was important when attacked by such people to recognise that whilst their accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ may be libels 99 times out of a hundred, there are occasions when we have to sit up and take notice.

So it is that Nahida, an Atzmonite in Liverpool branch, where there have been problems, could write that:
‘The crusade against PSC was ignited by Zionists from outside the movement beginning in September, following an article published on the Zionist hate-website Harry's Place (HP), and a letter from the Board of Deputies of British Jews” (BODBJ), accusing PSC and its branches of publishing anti-Semitic articles and linking to Holocaust denial websites, which arguably is a crude lie. However, the crusade was sustained, promoted and amplified by insiders with questionable loyalty, who roam freely within the Palestine solidarity movement.’ Following those attacks and demands by BOD of British Jews, certain elements inside the solidarity movement picked up where Zionists stopped. Since then they have initiated a campaign of defamation against Palestinian activists (including myself) and numerous other supporters.'

We, i.e. me and members of groups like J-Big, are the ‘inside’ Zionists as opposed to the honest ones. The problem with the Atzmonites is that their arguments and terms of reference are merely an echo of the Zionist argument. They are the reflection of Zionism in much the same way as Zionism was a reflection of anti-Semitism. And as I pointed out, to most Jews, in the pre–holocaust period, Zionism was considered a species of anti-Semitism.

All in a all a very good day for PSC and the Palestinians and an abject defeat for the apologists for Atzmon and Eisen.

Because I was heavily involved in the debate on specific motions, comments would be welcome both on this and the other issues debated at the conference.

Tony Greenstein

All Out for PSC AGM

2012-01-19T01:22:00.010Z

There's No Room for Holocaust deniers in an anti-racist campaign

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is a Racism Free Zone

It takes a certain kind of genius to turn attention away from the links between the Zionists and fascist/far-right parties and onto the Palestine solidarity movement. This is the solitary 'achievement' of the supporters of Gilad Atzmon, inside and outside Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It is to the eternal shame of Gill Kaffash, Roy Ratcliffe, Frances Clarke-Lowes et al. that they have managed to align themselves with those whose hatred of Jews is second only to that of Muslims.

Lest anyone be under any doubt even a post by Thomas Venner on the notoriouis Zionist site Engage was forced to admit that

‘a couple of the EDL members who were waving Israeli flags were also wearing poorly-concealed neo-Nazi insignia of various sorts at the same time. One man in particular was, while waving an Israeli flag, wearing a t-shirt with a picture of one of the crematoria at Auschwitz on it, with “Zyklon-B” emblazoned over it in large, gothic letters. After that, it’s difficult to take seriously all these claims about the EDL “supporting Israel”.’

Of course there is no contradiction between supporting what the Nazis did to the Jews and what Israel does to the Palestinians. Were not Arabs lower on the Nazi racial ladder than even the Jews? And this is to say nothing of how the Zionists, during the 1930’s, prioritised building the state over saving the Jewish refugees. This is not conjecture.

Most reputable Zionist historians, even Ben-Gurion’s official biographer, Shabtia Teveth in 'The Burning Ground - 1886-1948' describe his attitude to the holocaust as being a beneficial opportunity. Zionism not only blocked attempts by Jews to escape to places other than Palestine but actually sat on the first definitive report of the holocaust for 3 months, from August to November 1942 (at the request of the US Administration) and then sought to minimise if not deny that the holocaust was actually happening. The details are in Shabtai Zvi’s Post-Ugandan Zionism on Trial The Arabs of today are also the Jews of yesterday.

Teveth describes how Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and Chairman of the Jew Agency 'concentrated all his efforts on the program, not to the tragedy of European Jewry. He maintained a puzzling silence about what was taking place in Europe and Riegner's telegrams.' [p.842] 'In spite of the certainty that genocide was being carried out, the JAE did not devite appreciably from its routine' [p.848] 'Regarding Jewish adversity as a source of strength had always been at the foundation of his thinking... "distress" could also serve as "political leverage".... "The harsher the affliction, the greater the strength of Zionism.' [850]. Unsurprisingly Teveth entitles the chapter on BG and the Holocaust 'Disaster Means Strength'. The disaster of 6 million dead was a source of strength to Zionism. Little wonder that Teveth, Ben-Gurion's devoted discipline wrote that 'If there was a line in Ben-Gurion's mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.' [851] But again I digress.

At a time when even a French Parliamentary Report accuses Israel of Water Apartheid in the West Bank and when Israel’s Ambassador at the UN, Ron Prosor, holds friendly meetings over dinner with French fascist leader Marie Le Pen , to say nothing of our own Jonathan Hoffman demonstrating alongside the English Defence League, a handful of misguided supporters of the Palestinians believe that their salvation lies in digging up the bones of European anti-Semitism.

Gilad Atzmon’s mentor, someone he considers ‘unique and advanced’ (granted he’s certainly unique!) one Israel Shamir, even went as far as to berate the British National Party for not being sufficiently anti-Semitic! [e-mail to me 12.6.05.]

the far right of 1930s stood against what they considered 'Jewish onslaught', while you, Sir, join in it. Your joining forces with Zionism is a full betrayal of the English ideals whose best features were exemplified by Chesterton and Eliot. By your parroting of Jewish nonsense of "Islamic threat" you are supporting their drive on the Middle East though this step brings in the immigration you object to.
I do not feel at ease accusing you and your comrades of betraying the Britons and joining with the Jews, but if I'd keep mum, stones won't. I'd publish your response, and I hope you'll spread mine among your readers and members.
Israel Adam Shamir

On Saturday PSC will hold its AGM at Conway Hall, London. It takes place against the background of severe disruption to PSC’s work by a handful of supporters and sympathisers of Gilad Atzmon – the anti-Semitic ex-Israeli jazz player.

It should be no surprise that a minority, a very small minority, of PSC members have succumbed to the argument that ‘the Jews’ as a seamless entity, are responsible for the brutal oppression of the Palestinians. For years supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of Zionism have been told that they are anti-Semitic. Zionism was held to be synonymous with being Jewish. Unfortunately a few people have accepted this Zionist canard. As I wrote for the Guardian’s Comment is Free: ‘If you cry wolf long and loud enough, when anti-semitism does raise its head no one will bat an eyelid.’

Atzmon has the credentials, an ex-Israeli who has repented, as well as being a famous jazz player, to give legitimacy to this Zionist argument. In ‘Not in my name’ he wrote that:

‘To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy. To resist Zionism as a secular Jew involves an acceptance of basic Zionist terminology, that is to say, a surrendering to Jewish racist and nationalist philosophy. To talk as a Jew is to surrender to Weizman’s Zionist philosophy.’

For Atzmon to be a Jew is to be a Zionist. His main target has therefore become ‘the enemy within’ - Jewish anti-Zionists within the Palestine solidarity movement. Zionists are at least honest. As he wrote in his review of Anthony Julius’s attack on Jewish anti-Zionists:

it is rather depressing to admit that his deconstruction of some large sectors of the Jewish political and ideological left is more than valid. As bizarre as it may sound, in places his criticism of his dissident anti-Zionists brothers and sisters is not far at all from the discomfort expressed rather often by Palestinians and Palestinian solidarity activists concerning Jewish anti-Zionism Anthony Julius and a journey to the dark Zionist world

And it is important to understand that, regardless of whether it is true that Atzmon has links with Mossad he is death to solidarity with the Palestinians. According to his former friend and close collaborator Mary Rizzo -

‘I wanted out and I especially wanted to be far away from a person who hung out with a person who was a known informant, though he insisted it could not be true, but I'd trust a Palestinian from Palestine before I would an Israeli from Israel any day of the week.’

After repeated inquiries, Atzmon informed me (e-mail 17.8.12.) re these allegations:

‘Re Mary Rizzo, and her fantasies, she was referring to Morris Herman, she quoted a Pls 'source,' at the time I went and asked the 'source' and the source admitted that she had no idea who Morris Herman..this put an end to my relationship with Rizzo..

However, I investigated the issue myself and didn't have any reason to believe that Herman was an informant….’

No doubt Atzmon investigated his links with an alleged Mossadnik very carefully! You might also think it is a choice between syphilis and gonorrhoea, but despite her undoubted anti-Semitism, Mary Rizzo is at least sincere in her support of the Palestinians. But I digress again.

To Atzmon, the holocaust was a ‘narrative’, a story whose ending could be changed at the flick of a pen. Of course Zionism has shamelessly used the holocaust as a political weapon to justify the expulsion, massacre and exploitation of the Palestinians. It is not surprising that a small minority of their supporters have responded by adopting holocaust denial, whilst not being pro-fascist or personally anti-Semitic in any way. Indeed Atzmon is quite unique among his followers in that he is genuinely anti-Semitic on a personal level. But if you are a sincere supporter of the Palestinians then Atzmon's holocaust denial acolytes must be cast out.

In Truth, History & Integrity, Atzmon wrote that:

‘If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?

I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?

I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments…’

Zionism and its propagandists, in what Norman Finkelstein termed the ‘Misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of History’ [Verso, 2005] have taken holocaust denial out of the confines of a small coterie of European neo-Nazis and helped popularise it in the third world. The argument is that since Israel claims legitimacy through the holocaust all one needs to do is deny the holocaust to deny Israel any legitimacy. However the holocaust is a fact and this ‘logic’ ends up as an endorsement of Israel!

It is precisely this phenomenon which has misled a small minority of PSC members and Palestinians. It is a product of an almost complete depoliticisation, coupled with a separatist reaction to oppression. Zionism was a separatist movement which adopted the framework of anti-Semitism. The anti-Semites said the Jews did not belong in non-Jewish society and the Zionists agreed. The same is true of radical feminism or Marcus Garvey’s meetings with the KKK.

If Zionism had remained at the level of ideology it would have been an interesting historical curiosity. But Zionism sought and obtained an alliance with western colonialism. German, French and British imperialists fell over themselves to endorse a ‘return’ of the Jews to Palestine. The British won with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, named after its author, Arthur James Balfour, the anti-Semitic Foreign Secretary who introduced the Aliens Act 1905, designed to keep Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia out of Britain. A British colony in Palestine would be strategically useful, being adjacenet to the Suez Canal, on the route to India. Indeed it was non-Jewish imperialists like Lord Palmerston who were the first Zionists.

And when coupled with the publication this year of Atzmon’s The Wandering Who? endorsed by at least 5 professors, including John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk, it is little wonder that a few of those inflamed by the persecution of the Palestinians should seek solace in holocaust denial.

It would be futile to pretend that this has not caused major problems for PSC. But unlike the Zionist movement, we are able to expel and remove the racists. If the Zionists did so they would have no movement. Four years ago, some of us tried to ban the group, Deir Yassin Remembered, a group led by an open holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. Unfortunately the then Executive took a sectarian stance, denying that there was a problem. Today that is not possible. Up and down the country individual branches have experienced problems. In my own branch, Brighton, former National Chair of PSC, Frances Clarke-Lowes came out as a holocaust denier. He was promptly expelled by the local branch and then by national PSC. His appeal against this expulsion will be heard on Saturday.

In Liverpool the Friends of Palestine website was taken over by a holocaust denier. In Exeter the branch had some involvement in the organisation of an Atzmon meeting at the university (although others protested strongly). In Bradford the Raise Your Banners group invited Atzmon to play at a left cultural festival and claimed PSC support, until PSC disowned it. In Camden PSC, the Secretary Gill Kaffash was forced to step down as Secretary after her holocaust denial sympathies became clear.

It is entirely to the credit of the PSC Executive and its Secretary, Ben Sofa and Director Sara Colborne, that last September they changed the statement ‘About our campaign’ on the front page of PSC’s web site to make its position absolutely clear:

‘Any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the holocaust have no place in our movement. Such statements are abhorrent in their own right and can only detract from the building of a strong movement in support of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.’

Atzmon immediately attacked the statement. He didn’t know what holocaust denial means!

These developments have been grist to the Zionist mill. The Jewish Chronicle and many other papers have run a number of articles, e.g. an attack on PSC by Atzmon’s supporters such as Lauren Booth, Tony Blair's sister-in-law. But the Zionists, trapped by their own racism, have been left struggling to find a response. Hence the JC has not only quoted my own blog frequently but in a remarkably fair article (for the JC!) Anthony Cooper wrote an article The Jews who can distinguish antisemitism from anti-Israel for which he was predictably savaged.

Even the rabidly Islamaphobic pro-war site, Harry’s Place reprinted this article though not unnaturally taking delight at what it sees the infighting in PSC. But the majority of Zionist propagandists have tried to pass this off as mere infighting among supporters of the Palestinians. Indeed Atzmon has been praised by Harry’s Place for his anti-Boycott stance!

On Saturday there will be one motion on anti-Semitism and racism on the agenda from the National Executive. A motion from Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and myself, which called for more internal education on Zionism, has been amended and accepted by the Executive.

Although there have been in the past, and no doubt will be in the future, disagreements between ourselves and PSC Executive over tactics and strategy, over one thing we are absolutely united. There is no place in PSC for any trace of racism or anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism today is primarily a marginal prejudice. It is not a danger to Jews so much as the Palestinians. Without anti-Semitism there would have been no Zionism. It was anti-Semitism which drove a minority of Jews to Palestine. It was Hitler and the extermination of European Jewry which gave Israel its legitimacy as a refuge for Jews, there to establish a settler-colonial state based on the very principles that the anti-Semites espoused. As the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herzl wrote over a century ago: ‘Anti-Semitism has grown, and continues to grow and so do I.’ [Diaries, p.7]

At the AGM there is also a not very clever motion from Gill Kaffash and ex-Israeli Ruth Tenne, which seeks to define racism so as to exclude holocaust denial! They also manage to exclude Islamaphobia from their definition of racism by confining racism to its biological variant and its discriminatory effect. It is a stupid motion from the stupid.

Support for the Palestinians is an anti-racist struggle. It can be no other. I urge all supporters of the Palestinians and members of PSC to come to the AGM and vote to ensure that the main motion is passed overwhelmingly and Kaffash/Tenne’s motion is soundly defeated.

Tony Greenstein

Successful Boycott Action at Tesco in Brighton & Hove

2012-01-15T05:36:00.003Z

Even the Police Refused to Turn Up

Successful Boycott Action today in Tesco's, Hove.

About 20 of us from Brighton PSC branch went shopping at Tesco’s, anxious about the drop in their share price recently, when we came across a number of items of Israeli produce. Well we just had to protest!

After having been escorted out of the branch, albeit after about 10 minutes, and they seemed none too keen on me filming (!), we had a succesful picket outside. A couple of Zionists became aggressive and one tried snatching the megaphone out of my hand but the reception was very good apart from a few toe rags whose only response was ‘you’re on private property’!! It would seem that the level of Zionist aggro is increasing and is directly related to the succecss we are having.

Although the Police were called they didn’t turn up so after nearly an hour waiting for them we decided to call it a day!

Here is the footage I took, excuse some of the banter!

Clips include a Welsh action where blood red dye was sprayed over an overturned trolly of Tesco’s stolen produce.

Tony Greenstein

The Premature Death of Tony Greenstein & Roland Rance

2012-01-14T19:06:00.007Z

[CLICK TO READ]
Paul Bogdanor and/or Professor Steve Plaut Sink to New Lows as He Pretends To Be Gilad Atzmon on Sheffield Indymedia

(not that there's much difference!)

You will imagine my surprise when, googling the Internet in the small hours of this morning, I came across the announcement of Roland Rance’s and my own funeral. ‘The funeral of Stalinazi Tony Greenstein’. As Mark Twain notes, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

The announcement is posted in the name of Gilad Atzmon but there are good reasons to believe, for once, that he is not the one responsible. It would appear to be the work of either two far-right Zionists - Mad Mikey Ezra, an ex-collaborator of Atzmon and Zionist Paul Bogdanor, the deranged son of the eminently boring but sane constitutional historian, Vernon Bogdanor. or one Steve Plaut. The term ‘Stalinazi’ is not one that Atzmon uses.

Steve Plaut is an open supporter of the fascist Jewish Defence League (of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane) as is, believe it or not, a Professor at Haifa University!

Clues include the use of the word ‘cornhold’. This is, I am told, a homophobic remark and these Zionists frequently resort to such bigoted and infantile ‘humour’. Particularly against Roland Rance. It ties in with their politics. To my knowledge, Atzmon isn’t homophobic unlike the aforementioned Zionists.

Bogdanor is a virulent anti-communist who exaggerates the crimes of Stalin, associates them through ‘guilt by association’ with socialists and Trotskyites and of course has a selective blind eye when it comes to the crimes of the West and the USA e.g. Iraq, Israel, Vietnam etc. He has a particular focus on Noam Chomsky and has penned ‘200 lies’ about him. A good and reasoned expose of a sample of these ‘lies is here.

Bogdanor also seems to be camera shy. A book he co-wrote with Edward Alexander has the former’s picture but Bogdanor doesn’t seem to like being exposed to the light of the day.

What is pretty outrageous though is that this posting is still up on both Sheffield and UK Indymedia. Sheffield apparently thinks that ‘hiding’ the post somehow makes it alright. UK IM hasn’t bothered to do even that. I have written to Sheffield IM, who didn’t even have the courtesy to reply to my post before hiding Bogdanor's.

This blog was originally set up because UK Indymedia allowed Gilad Atzmon to post a variety of anti-Semitic holocaust denial nonsense and a couple of anti-Semites, led by Free The Peeps (Roy Bard) blocked any decision to take them down and indeed hid criticism of those who disagreed with Atzmon. See An Open Letter to IM, IM finally replies to its critics, IM update atzmon beats a retreat, The hornets nest and the stick an IM UK update,

Let us see if they have improved over the years. Below is my post to Sheffield IM. One can assume that other IMs may have been targeted. Let us hope they are not as stupid as Sheffield’s lot are.

Tony Greenstein

From: tony greenstein

To: "sheffield@indymedia.org"
Sent: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 6:13
Subject: Our premature deaths announced by Jazz Fascist Atzmon

Is there a good reason why you are posting an article by holocaust denier Gilad Atzmon announcing the death of 2 anti-Zionist activists - Roland Rance & myself?

Please take it down and ensure this rat doesn't post again

Tony Greenstein

I wrote a further e-mail to them:

I sent you an e-mail earlier today. You haven't had the courtesy to respond and you have instead hidden the post (after a fashion). In fact the post is probably not from Atzmon but a far-right Zionist Paul Bogdanor, but that matters little.

Fact is that this should have been scrubbed, you should have apologised for putting it up and provided some explanation for why it wasn't spotted.

It would seem that, once again, any fascist or their sympathisers can post on Indy Media - the 'alternative' news media. Some alternative.

From: tony greenstein
To: "tech@lists.indymedia.org.uk"
Sent: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 18:47

I have come across an article announcing the funeral of Roland Rance and myself. It is somewhat premature! It is allegedly posted by the anti-semitic Gilad Atzmon but given the style is more than likely to come from uber Zionist Paul Bogdanor. Please take it down, don't hide it, it is entirely without merit (and is also homophobic).

From: tony greenstein
To: "mrdemeanour@jackpot.uk.net" ; "chrisc@indymedia.org.uk"
Sent: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 19:01
Subject: Report of my 'funeral' by Atzmon/Bogdanor

I have just come across this disgusting post. It is allegedly by the anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon but I suspect it is the ultra-Zionist Paul Bogdanor. Regardless please remove, i.e. not hide, this post.

I would hate us to have to go to war again over something like this.

And please have the courtesy to inform me.

I shall also blog on this because you should not have allowed it to remain up.

Tony Greenstein

Amnon Neumann Describes how Palmach Effected the Expulsions

2012-01-14T05:49:00.003Z

The ghosts of the Nakba come back to Haunt Israel

Amnon Neumann was a member of the elite Palmach shock troops. Consisting primarily of member of the ‘left-wing’ Kibbutzim, it was responsible primarily for the Nakba and expulsions and massacres. Although Neumann refused to talk about the massacres he gives more than enough detail to demolish the myth that the Arabs ran away in order to let the Arab armies in.

As Neuman says, he described what happened in his ‘Purity of Arms’ a fascist idea current in then left-Zionist circles. Effectively a worship of militarism.

As the older butchers die out, so many of them have decided to relieve their consciences like Neumann and thus the truth is seeping out from its perpetrators.

Tony Greenstein

Testimony of a Palmach fighter who expelled Palestinians During the Nakba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KS4OXOom_vk

December 30, 2011

The Israeli group Zochrot has posted a video testimony from Amnon Neumann, a man who fought with the Palmach during the Nakba of 1948. According to their web site, “Zochrot (‘Remembering’) seeks to raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, especially among Jews in Israel, who bear a special responsibility to remember and amend the legacy of 1948.”

Public hearing at Zochrot, Tel-Aviv, June 17, 2010. The audience consisted of about twenty people. Initiated and organized by Amir Hallel. The testimony was video-recorded by Lia Tarachansky. Miri Barak prepared the transcription. Eitan Bronstein edited, summarized, and added footnotes. Translated to English by Asaf Kedar. Video editing by Zohar Kfir

Omar Barghouti adds:

Despite some moments of remorse, the former member of this terror group tells the interviewer that he refuses to talk about the massacres, in particular, because he participated in them. He also tries to portray Palestinian villages as all made of straw and mud houses! Perhaps the selective amnesia that has afflicted almost all Jewish Israelis has not spared Neumann.

Warning to Palestinian refugees watching this: it can be really difficult to listen to parts of this testimony. I had to stop the video twice – the nonchalance with which Neumann describes (in clearly sanitized language) the forced expulsion, the killings of farmers tending their grapevines – is overwhelming.

Transcript

Amnon Neumann: I was in the Second, Eighth, and Ninth Battalions of the Palmach from February 1948 until my discharge in October 1949. I was there for this whole period, except for a few months after I had been wounded and after my father had passed away.

The most significant period for me in terms of the Nakba was April-May 1948, when the battles or clashes with the locals took place, until the Egyptian Army arrived. At first we escorted convoys traveling on the road from 'Iraq Suwaydan , from Rehovot, [through] 'Iraq Suwaydan, Kawkaba and Burayr, to Nir-'Am where our company headquarters were located. Then an armed group of Arabs situated itself in Burayr and didn’t let us through, so we took a different route, from near Ashdod where Isdud was located, through Majdal, Barbara, Bayt Jirja, to Yad Mordechai. From there we drove to Nir-'Am. Those were the two routes [we used] until the Egyptian army arrived. When the Egyptian army arrived, it was a completely different situation.

The Egyptian army arrived when we had wiped out all Arab resistance, which wasn’t that strong. It would be an exaggeration to say we fought against the Palestinians… in fact there were no battles, almost no battles. In Burayr there was a battle, there were battles here and there, further up north. But there were no big battles; why? Because they had no military capabilities, there weren’t organized. The big battles started with the entry of the Egyptian army, and those were very difficult problems, especially from May 15th, when we were still an organized army—the Palmach—semi-military. But their soldiers were organized by British methods, they fought like the British. But they had no leadership and they had no motivation. So when they attacked, it was very lousy, they hardly knew how to attack, but they did know how to defend themselves. They knew they were fighting for their lives. But as far as all the rest, it was a fifth-rate army. They had terrible cannons that killed us like hell. They had all kinds of tanks of different types, and they were a problem for us. We didn’t have anything, we had armored vehicles, those fluttering ones that were impossible to fight with, not against tanks and not even against a halftrack, right? But we more or less managed with them.

The villagers’ flight, and I understand this is the main issue here, happened gradually. I only know about what happened from the 'Iraq Suwaydan road, [through] Majdal, to 'Iraq al-Manshiyya . We were to the south of this area, and to its north there was the Givati Brigade. The day the Egyptians entered the war, the Negev was cut off and that was mostly our fault, my platoon’s fault… I’ll say more about it later. But that wasn’t significant. The Egyptians’ attacks were significant. They beat the hell out of us and killed us mercilessly.

The villagers’ flight started when we began cleaning these convoy escort routes. It was then that we started to expel the villagers… and in the end they fled by themselves. There were no special events worth mentioning. No atrocities and no nothing. No civilians can live while there’s a war going on. They didn’t think they were running away for a long period of time, they didn’t think they wouldn’t return. Nor did anyone imagine that a whole people won’t return.

First we expelled those … and then we started expanding sideways. To Najd , to Simsim , and that was a later stage. There were no battles, except for one battle in Burayr. In the north there were battles, with Givati, but we didn’t have any battles. We did ok with them … (silence). One village was left, between Dorot and Nir-'Am, that’s Kufr Huj, they didn’t run away and we didn’t expel them. There was probably an agreement at a higher level that Huj is not to be touched.

The first time I entered Kawkaba and Burayr I was amazed by their poverty. There was nothing there. No furniture and no nothing, there were shelves made of straw and mud, the houses were made of mud and straw. They lived there for thousands of years without any changes, and the only thing that happened to them was the disaster of the Nakba in “Tashah” [1948]. Because we didn’t come to collect taxes, we came to inherit the land from foreigners. That was the foundation of our thinking. We drove them out because of the Zionist ideology. Pure and simple. We came to inherit the land. Who do you inherit it from? If the land is empty, you don’t inherit it from anyone. The land wasn’t empty so we inherited it, and whoever inherits the land disinherits others. And that’s why we didn’t bring them back. It was everywhere, in the north and the south, everywhere. That’s the most important point. The land wasn’t empty as I was told when I was a child. I know it, because I lived with Arabs. I remember I was wounded and I went home, after April 1948, after they had expelled the Arabs in Haifa, they had run away. Our villages, Yajur and Balad al-Shaykh , didn’t exist anymore either. They were empty. And I came home and my father told me, Come sit, son. Sit. He told me, You know what happened? And I told him, Yes, I passed through Balad Al-Sheikh and there was no one there. And he said, Yes, there was a disaster. That’s not what was intended. That’s not what I intended. He came with the second Aliyah. And he said: that’s not what I intended. So nobody thought in these categories, maybe the Yishuv leaders did. My father was a simple man, a worker his entire life. And then I went back to the Negev and we did the same thing. At that time I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I was educated to it just like everybody else. And I followed through with it faithfully, and if I was told things I don’t want to mention—I did them without the least of a doubt. Without thinking twice. For fifty or sixty years I’ve been torturing myself about this. But what’s done is done. It was done by order. And I won’t go into that, these are not things that … (long silence).

In the north they fought. In the south they didn’t, they didn’t have anything. They were miserable, they didn’t have anywhere to go, or anyone to ask.

Eitan Bronstein: What happened in the village Burayr?

Amnon Neumann: There was a battle, and there was a slaughter…

Eitan Bronstein: Can you say a little bit more about that?

Amnon Neumann: I don’t want to go into these things, leave me alone! It’s … it’s not things we go into. Why? Because I did it. Is that a good reason? (Long silence)
I can tell you about one thing. We received an order to occupy the intersection near 'Iraq Suwaydan. There was a huge police station there which dominated the whole area. We went out with five jeeps and five armored vehicles. We stood at the intersection, and suddenly we heard the sound of tanks from the direction of Majdal. With our rifles and machine guns we couldn’t stand up to tanks. The moment we saw them we fled to Kawkaba, half a kilometer away, and hid in the village. Then the tanks came, stood there and started rotating their cannons, didn’t shoot or anything.

Dan Yahav: Whose tanks?

Amnon Neumann: The Egyptians’. Only they had tanks (laughing), we didn’t have any tanks back then. A few minutes later they started shooting at us from all directions. We sat in the armored vehicles, the fire wasn’t so… but they were shooting from all directions. Until we decided to find out who was there. We went out, looked around, ran a little. It was the villagers who had run away from Kawkaba that were shooting at us. Then our company commander, a nice guy, suddenly appeared with his pickup truck, took out a pistol and said, You abandoned the intersection, do you realize what that means?! It won’t be possible to pass through to the Negev anymore. So we told him, Moishe, go ahead and drive to the intersection, look closely, can you make it to the intersection? So he relaxed a little and then the Egyptian Spitfires came, bombed us and destroyed his pickup truck. He jumped into the sabra bushes and came out alive.
Eitan Bronstein: So who did the shooting, I didn’t understand who did the shooting.
Amnon Neumann: The Arabs who had lived in Kawkaba, the saw that we were running away, so they revealed themselves.

Eitan Bronstein: And then they shot at you, the Arabs from Kawkaba?

Amnon Neumann: Yes, that’s right they shot at us from the hills, from the wadis.

Lia Tarachansky: In Kawkaba there were no more people left anymore?
Amnon Neumann: There was nothing there. The only thing I remember are the terrible fleas there, they devoured us.

Eitan Bronstein: How many people were you?

Amnon Neumann: We were a platoon, thirty people. I was in the scouting platoon. There were other platoons, in Nir-Am, in Dorot, in those places.

Amir Hallel: Did you get to see the Arab residents?

Amnon Neumann: Yes, I got to see them in one place, in two places, when we expelled them by night.

Dan Yahav: What kind of weapons did you have?

Amnon Neumann: From the 15th or 17th of May, we received the Czech guns. Both that and Bazot . But until then, I had a 1904 English rifle, with a broken butt that I tied with a steel wire.

Eitan Bronstein: When did you join the Palmach?

Amnon Neumann: I joined the Palmach in 1946, at the age of sixteen and a half.

Eitan Bronstein: And since then did you train regularly?

Amnon Neumann: Yes … Should I start telling the details?
Lia Tarachansky and Eitan Bronstein: It’s important.

Amnon Neumann: We were in training in Yagur. After four months in the Palmach, all our commanders were killed in a convoy on Haziv Bridge. We became orphans.

Amnon Neumann: A week later, the British army surrounded us and took us into custody at 'Atlit. After being two weeks or a month in 'Atlit, we were released and transferred to Gvat. And from there we were transferred after a while to Heftziba. We were there for about a year, and then one day they called us for roll call and said, Tomorrow you will be discharged from the Palmach (we had been in the Palmach for a year and nine months) and driven to a kibbutz near Rehovot. The next day, trucks came and took us, we got there in the evening, they put us in the dining hall and said, Now we’ll tell you what’s going on. The Haganah’s largest munitions factory is here. You will start working there, you’re no longer Palmachniks or anything, that was the arrangement then. We worked there until the war broke out four months later.
Eitan Bronstein: What did you work at?

Amnon Neumann: I made caps [for guns], nothing could be more boring. It was a huge factory, it’s still there, for example, at Kiryat HaMada in Rehovot, in Givat HaKibbutzim. It was underground. Yes, yes, I was a member of [Kibbutz] Maagan Michael, I had no choice. Nobody asked me. The factory is really impressive, we were also impressed by it at the time. It was in Rehovot next to the train station, very close to the train station, and we worked there until the war broke out. When the war broke out we continued to work there. And then a friend of mine comes to me and says, Look, we are trained soldiers, we’ve been taught and we are knowledgeable soldiers. What are we doing here making caps? So I told him, You know what? Go over to Palmach headquarters and find out, and so it was. He went and then he says, Tomorrow I’m leaving the kibbutz. I said, I can’t leave, and they won’t let you leave here so quickly. And he said, I’m leaving. He left, and a week later I told the Kibbutz I’m leaving too. We thought of going to Jerusalem. They sent us to the Negev. When I got to the train station in Rehovot I heard a terrible explosion, I looked back and saw a train rolling down the slope. I understood what happened. The Etzel (Irgun) or the Lechi (Shtern Gang) did it.

Dan Yahav: The Lechi.

Amnon Neumann: They blew up the trains carrying the English army to Egypt. I ran breathless to Rehovot and then I went to the Negev.
Dan Yahav: You didn’t manufacture only caps, but also 9mm bullets, didn’t you.

Amnon Neumann: Sure, but I made caps.
Eitan Bronstein: What else did they manufacture there?

Amnon Neumann: Sten bullets, and they inspected Sten parts. They would inspect them there, there was a special place for shooting. It was a big factory, something like fifty people worked there. Going down there, seven meters, it was … you can go visit the place to this day.

Amnon Neumann: I did a scouting course so they put me in a scouting platoon and there was another platoon there. When we got there my friend told me, Don’t you have a pit? There are cannons here. I told him, So what if there are cannons? I’d never heard [of] a cannon. So he says, It’s a terrible thing. Go dig yourself a pit and cover it, until midnight. We did it, we covered it. The next morning I see he’s dying of fear. A brave guy, a great guy, but dying of fear. It told him, Ptachia, what’s the matter? He answered, There are cannons! We wanted to go eat at eight o’clock, so he told me, No, we’re not going to eat at eight, we’ll go later. At eight fifteen the terrible cannons of Beit Hanoun, there were something like ten there, opened concentrated fire. Now I understand that what they had done earlier was ranging. But nobody knew what a cannon was, and nobody knew what ranging was. So they ranged them a day earlier, before I even got there, and they saw—they had great observation posts—that everybody is getting into the dining hall, it wasn’t in Nir-Am but in Mekorot, before Nir-Am, and then they opened very heavy fire. We sat there for three hours, until they finished destroying the whole place and it became quiet. We got out, the platoon commander approached me and told me, A friend of mine from Kfar Yehezkel came to visit me, he’s lying in the trench, look, and then I saw all the dead. The whole trench was full of dead people. The whole dining hall was full of dead people. Whoever didn’t have a head cover was either killed or escaped, managed to escape. There were some who managed to escape. That was the Egyptian army’s welcome reception. After that they advanced and got to … The two-week long battle over Be’erot started … near Yad-Mordechai. We tried then to bypass the Egyptians but it didn’t work out. Only in the last night when it was decided that we’re leaving them, that we’re leaving the place, were we able to get the people out.

Question: What years are we talking about?

Amnon Neumann: July 48, until the first break in the fighting. By the time of the first break there were no more Arabs in the area.

Question: I don’t know if you will get back later to the topic I want to ask about. You said “we expelled” the villagers, can you describe an expulsion action for us, how it was done?

Amnon Neumann: Yes, until then some of them fled and some were expelled. We shot and they fled to Gaza. But we expelled systematically in the last day of the break in the fighting. During the break there were also a few battles. They tried to penetrate through the Gaza-Beersheba road and we stopped them. The Egyptians! There was no one else to stop.

Eitan Bronstein: Can you say in this context, do you remember what was the order you received regarding the Arab villages?

Amnon Neumann: I’ll tell you. I don’t like it, but I’ll tell you. In the last day of the break we were told that the Egyptians smuggled 20mm cannons to the villages Kawfakha and al-Muharraqa and tomorrow they would act with them and we need to destroy these villages. We drove there … and the men had fled, that was the usual practice. The men would run away first, leaving the women and the children, and then … (silence) we would expel them, right? And so it was in Kawfakha. I was in Kawfakha, others were in al-Muharraqa. It’s about 15km from Gaza. We surrounded the village, started shooting in the air, and everybody started to scream, yes, and … and we drove them out. The women and the children went to Gaza.

Lia Tarachansky: Were there people who didn’t agree to go?
Amnon Neumann: Nobody dared. I’ll tell you why: their mentality was that whoever dares will be killed anyway. They would do it too, if it were the other way around. These are no saints. It’s in the people’s culture, that this is how it’s always been. Whoever resisted would be killed with a sword or by shooting. It’s not an uncommon thing. By morning no one was there. We burned the houses that had straw roofs.

Eitan Bronstein: Just a second, I don’t understand, what exactly was the order in this context, was there an order in some villages to destroy the whole village and not in others? What exactly was the procedure?

Amnon Neumann: No, no, no. These villages were in our rear, and from a military standpoint it made sense. Nobody knew … we didn’t find any cannon there – that’s clear. But now it became an even surface, an open area that you could maneuver in.

Amir Hallel: Before then, if you had approached that area would it have been dangerous, would it have been disruptive?

Amnon Neumann: Nobody would have dared go into an inhabited village. We never entered villages to stay there but only to expel them. Someone asked earlier how they were expelled. This is how it was. Then the same thing happened with the Tarabin and with the Bedouin tribes. That was half a year later.

Amir Hallel: You said that in the whole area of the villages further to the north—when the Egyptians shot at you from Beit Hanoun in June in the whole area except for Huj—you said there were no Arabs. So what happened to those villagers?

Amnon Neumann: There were no Arabs, either they fled or we expelled them. We had already conquered Burayr in battle. The others, they saw that there’s nothing in Hulayqat so they ran away. The big battle of Hulayqat was between our army and the Egyptians. There were no civilians.

Amir Hallel: And in Burayr, which battalion was that?

Amnon Neumann: That was the Second Battalion of the Palmach.

Amir Hallel: They attacked Burayr?

Amnon Neumann: Yes.

Eitan Bronstein: But who was resisting there, who was the battle against?

Amnon Neumann: The villagers couldn’t do anything against armed units entering the village, we called them gangs. But what does “gangs” mean? Those were groups of local soldiers that weren’t trained at all. The battle in Burayr wasn’t a big battle either, they ran away.

Amir Hallel: The inhabitants of the village?

Amnon Neumann: No, the armed people were foreigners there, they came to defend the village. Qawuqji told them, Fight, fight the Jews—we’ll come help you from Acre. No help and no nothing. At Sumayriyya near Regba it was the same thing. It characterized them in the south too, where I was, and also in the north. With the locals there was almost … in the north there were more battles, even difficult battles.

Eitan Bronstein: You’re saying it was a battle with armed people who were not the inhabitants of the village, in Burayr. But at the same time there were still residents of Burayr in the village?

Amnon Neumann: Yes!

Eitan Bronstein: So, there was a battle?

Amnon Neumann: There was a battle, and there was also a small murder and similar things and then the inhabitants ran away completely.

Eitan Bronstein: Yes, there are testimonies about a massacre having taken place in Burayr.

Amnon Neumann: You’ve heard about it?

Eitan Bronstein: Yes.

Dan Yahav: I wrote about it, it appears in my “Purity of Arms”.

Amnon Neumann: It does?

Dan Yahav: Yes.

Amnon Neumann: I don’t want to deal with it.

Dan Yahav: And in other villages as well.

Amnon Neumann: I know, I don’t want to deal with it!

Dan Yahav: Allow me a minute, I see the topic of the expulsion is a very sensitive topic. You were a soldier, I was also a soldier, and when I fought I wouldn’t know exactly what was happening in the area. But there are wonderful descriptions in the Negba archive. There is a wonderful description of a kibbutz member! He sees the expulsion, he sees the convoy with the children and everything and it reminds him of terrible things the Jewish people has been through. The same thing is available at Shmaria Gutman’s in Na’an, regarding Lud, Lud and Ramle, about the expulsion.

Amnon Neumann: Oh, right, right.

Eitan Bronstein: Today it is sensitive for you to recall it?

Amnon Neumann: (quietly) Yes, it is.

Amir Hallel: You said there was a time when you would pass through Bureir and at some point you stopped.

Amnon Neumann: Yes, we couldn’t pass through them because the shooting was too strong, and our miserable armored vehicles couldn’t handle it. So we drove through Ashkelon, Isdud, Ashkelon, Barbara, Bayt Jirja, down to Nir-'Am. Part of the route was even a dirt road. I want to note that the people I was with over there, in our platoon everyone were born in this country. In the other platoon there were others, including immigrants and people who hadn’t grown up with the country’s air of decency, an air of people who knew what they were going to do, who gave their lives without thinking twice.

Eitan Bronstein: What was the atmosphere among the people in terms of the feelings they had about what happened then, during that time?

Amnon Neumann: It was a horrible period: we were sure that the Egyptians would wipe us out, especially after they had cut off the Negev. We didn’t know that the Ninth Battalion was getting organized in the north and would come and break the siege, we didn’t know that. That was later on, in Operation “Yoav”.

Eitan Bronstein: So in terms of the feeling, there was a feeling that it was like the end?

Amnon Neumann: That’s what I observed, unpleasantly. There was also a second platoon with us in Burayr. One guy, an Egyptian Jew, came here and said—excuse me—“I fucked her and shot her”.

Eitan Bronstein: Did you hear him say it?

Amnon Neumann: No, I was told about this later, I didn’t see him. And then they ran, the people who were there and saw her, a 17-year-old girl, he had put a bullet through her head. I approached the platoon commander, who was from Tel Yosef, and I told him, I told him, I think he should be killed. So he said, Stop it you! We’re all going to die in a week or two, what are you messing around with here … that was the mood back then. Later on the situation got better. We saw the Egyptians weren’t worth much, and they can be wiped out, and we really did attack the cannons and destroyed them and killed lots of Egyptians there. And after that the situation stabilized.

Amir Hallel: What happened to that guy?

Amnon Neumann: Nothing. What happened to him? Don’t ask! Don’t ask what happened.

Amir Hallel: You told me…

Amnon Neumann: I told you? So why do you need me to say it here? It’s not important. Just as I wasn’t important. He was killed later, but killed in a terrible way. But why is that important? A lot of my friends were killed not in a terrible way.

Eitan Bronstein: Can we get back to that harsh expression you mentioned. From that word you understood that there had been a rape there followed by murder?

Amnon Neumann: I didn’t see it, but people ran and saw it. They saw that girl lying there with a bullet in her head.

Dan Yahav: But they had washed her there, she was clean.

Amnon Neumann: I didn’t see and didn’t ask, how do you know?

Dan Yahav: I’m telling you, I know.

Amnon Neumann: This particular case?

Dan Yahav: Yes.

Amnon Neumann: With this Egyptian?

Dan Yahav: Yes, yes.

Amnon Neumann: I see you’ve done some research.

Dan Yahav: They washed her, prepared her and then did what they did. (Silence)

Amnon Neumann: I didn’t know these details and I never wanted to go into the thick of things.

Dan Yahav: By the way, the IDF archive is unwilling to this day to open documents related to cases of rape. It’s still [a matter of] “Israel’s security”. (Long silence)

Amnon Neumann: After that I was in Beersheba. There was a short battle there. It wasn’t a big battle, four or five hours and that’s it. There was a chain of Egyptian military posts there, 10km after Beersheba, and we attacked them, and it was the first time I encountered, in Beersheba, what we called the “French commando”. It was a unit made up of immigrants from Morocco. They were trained in Beersheba, in the alleys of Beersheba, and they attacked there. It was ok, we drove out the Egyptians, the Egyptians didn’t hold out anywhere for very long. It was the first time I saw soldiers walking around among the dead Egyptians. It turned out they had been looking for gold teeth in the officers’ mouths. I went crazy. My conceptual world was different.

Lia Tarachansky: Were there cases of disobedience to orders? Did anyone get up and leave rather than go all the way through with it?
Amnon Neumann: Where? With us? No. Never. Everyone went all the way through with it and to the bitter end.
Eitan Bronstein: You know, Amnon, we once met a soldier who had fought in Beersheba and he told us they shot people who had fled from Beersheba, people ran away and soldiers shot them, shot civilians.

Amnon Neumann: Yes, yes, yes. They ran away to the east and the south and they were shot. That’s because it was, I saw it… ok, I did that too. Are we done? Why should I go into details?

Eitan Bronstein: But you can describe exactly this thing, how you as a soldier, you’re shooting people who you see aren’t shooting at you, how… how did you understand it back then? Over there? That you had the full right to do it?

Amnon Neumann: I didn’t understand, I was 19.
Eitan Bronstein: So you just did it?

Amnon Neumann: I was a fool and I didn’t know. Yes. That’s why I’m in such despair, because soldiers are always 19-20 years old, and they never sober up until they’ve been through four battles. That’s the main point. And there will always be new 19-year-olds.

Amir Hallel: Was there an order to do it?

Amnon Neumann: Where I was, there was an order in one case. As I said, the horrors of war are more difficult than the battles of war, which are not easy either.

Eitan Bronstein: I heard recently about a testimony given by a Palmachnik, [who had been] I think in Simsim, were you in Simsim?

Amnon Neumann: I was there after the village had been destroyed.

Eitan Bronstein: So maybe you’ve heard soldiers’ testimonies saying they saved the Palestinian women from Palestinian men shooting their wives?

Amnon Neumann: They didn’t save, our soldiers didn’t save anyone. Look, in the heat of battle you don’t save anyone. And save just one person, yourself. Right? You don’t save anyone. After that there was the big battle over Be’erot Yitzhak. Really, a big and terrible battle. Half of the men of Be’erot Yitzhak were killed there. How many were there? There were 100, 40 were killed there, something like that. And we came from the direction of Sa'ad to save them and the platoons of the “Negev Animals” came from the other direction and then there was a battle. We shot and they shot. In the end, they fixed their machine gun and mowed down the Sudanese. It was a lucerne field there. Straight, even. And then I saw from a distance, for the first and only time, how the Egyptian officers walk with pistols with the soldiers ahead of them, shooting, lying down, getting up, shooting. That was one of the elite units of the Sudanese army, which afterwards stayed in 'Iraq Suwaydan as well, until they conquered 'Iraq Suwaydan.

Amir Hallel: What do you mean when you say that those officers walked with pistols?

Amnon Neumann: What reason did a poor Sudanese have for going and getting killed? For what? Did he even know? Those were the British methods, that there should be order. But the British didn’t have… it was also that way in World War I, rest assured. No one wants to die just like that. What did the Sudanese have here? They were tall, giant, muscular negroes. After the battle our platoon went to collect the booty and the documents. That was our part.

Eitan Bronstein: What do you mean the documents?

Amnon Neumann: Of the dead! What unit was it, what they did, right? We walked there among… we turned everyone over, and… all that. Back then I didn’t feel anything for these dead people. They were enemies and it’s good that they died, right? I didn’t feel anything special.

Amnon Neumann: In March 1949 the race to conquer Eilat began. We went down as far as Wadi Abiad, where 'Ovda is. And we would kill poor Egyptians over there too, those who had got cut off from their units and we shot them from the hillside. Right? No one… they were abandoned, no one paid attention to them. After a week we were told, Operation 'Ovda—going to conquer Eilat. Our platoon split into two, there was a group that led the whole Negev Brigade. And we drove, I was the scout commander, we drove an hour after them. In one of the wadis I suddenly heard a sound that was already familiar to me, a land mine exploded, I looked back and saw the jeep behind us rising into the air and collapsing. And immediately they opened fire on us. Me and my driver… (laughing) we jumped under the jeep. I left the MG machine gun hanging there (laughing). And he told me, his name was Basri, he was from Iraq, he told me, Amnon this is the end. We had been a year together. This is the end. We saw the heads, the kafiyas of the Legion soldiers above us, about twenty meters. So I told him, there’s nothing else to do; here, each one of us has a rifle, let’s shoot five bullets, the whole magazine, and run, whatever happens happens. And so we did. We shot, ran and hid. A few days later our commander said we conquered Eilat and we’re driving down there. We drove until we got to Wadi Paran. They I told him, Listen, let go 10km in here and see what happened to the jeep. He said ok, and then we were all tensed up, maybe there’s an ambush or something. And I followed with the map and said, Here there’s 300m left until we get to the jeep, and so it was. 200m before the jeep I saw a Jordanian lying dead, with his kafiyah. We went down to him, he had gotten a bullet here (point to his head), from the ten bullets we had shot. And then we saw the mines. Our jeep which first went through squeezed it with the wheel and it didn’t go off. The second jeep drove over it. We got to Eilat and the war was over.

Amir Hallel: Just a second Amnon, what about the Bedouins? You started saying something about them.

Amnon Neumann: Right, I forgot. The Azazme, and the Tarabin. We were there for two months, we marked the roads that would later be constructed on the Negev Plateau. We got to every remote corner there, really, to every corner. That was when I saw the Azazme and the Tarabin. They would be hiding in all kinds of places, in narrow wadis. I don’t know what they lived off from. I don’t know where they drank water. It was in the Negev Plateau, there was one well there where we would go once every two weeks to wash. Bir Malihi. The good well. Malihi in Arabic means good. It was then that I saw how they lived there. And they were terribly afraid. When we would appear with the jeeps, the men would mount their horses and run away, leaving the women and the children. We never touched them, right? These are not the people we wanted to hurt.

Question: There were no orders to expel them, to transfer them?

Amnon Neumann: No, no. You are reminding me of the Jahalin. The same week we conquered Eilat, our platoon had only three or four people who were taken to the conquering of 'Ein-Gedi. When they came back, after two weeks, we all came back so I asked them, What did you do? So they said, Nothing. There were Jahalin there, we shot in the air and they ran away. We didn’t kill anyone, do anything, and Ein-Gedi is occupied. Later I heard about the Jahalin from a number of places. It was a large tribe in the east of the country and part of it was also in Jordan. A year ago, I visited… how do you call this place… where Sima went.

Dan Yahav: Ma’ale Adumim, they are still there.

Amnon Neumann: Yes, yes, Ma’ale Adumim. I visited there and saw the Bedouins. I said, Hannah, I have to approach them. And then I approached them. The youngsters received us, Hannah stayed in the car because it was a very warm day. The youngsters received us with such hatred: Get lost, why should we talk to you, are you a journalist? I told him, No, I’m not a journalist. So he told me again, Are you a journalist? I told him, No. and then I saw an old man standing there, on the side. I approached him and told him, Who are you? So he says, We are from the Jahalin. I told him, Where are you from the Jahalin? So he says, From Arad. I told him, No my friend, you are not from Arad, from the Arad area. So he says to me, How do you know? I said, I know. You were in the Dead Sea. I told him in Arabic. So he says, How do you know? So I said, They expelled you 60 years ago, didn’t they. He said, that’s right, after that we were in Arad. But before that we were in the valley below. There weren’t many to expel there.

Question: You also said they burned houses.

Amnon Neumann: That was in the south.

Eitan Bronstein: So in the south the houses were demolished immediately following the occupation, when the people left them.

Amnon Neumann: It wasn’t a problem to demolish them. These were mud and clay houses, nothing.

Questions from the audience: How did they do it? How did they demolish the houses?

Amnon Neumann: It was enough for an armored vehicle to drive by and give it a blow and the whole building would collapse.

Amir Hallel: What would you do if people tried to return to their village, what did you do?

Amnon Neumann: Oh, yes. People who were in Gaza wanted to return to their villages. They would come back at night and do two things: first, there was special agriculture, in the sand dunes, further up north. The vines would bloom and they would need to be pruned, so they would come there at night. The didn’t know they would never ever come back. And we waited for them, it was impossible to let them walk around there, so we waited for them.

Eitan Bronstein: Wait a minute, what would they come for, you didn’t say.

Amnon Neumann: To take care of the vine, to take all kinds of things from the village, I never looked into their sacks. And we would snipe and kill them. That was part of the horrible things.

A woman from the audience: One of the women-soldiers, the women who served in the Palmach, told about how during the war as well as afterwards throughout her life, the moral paralysis was so strong that it had to be accompanied by aggressiveness, and what she says is that after several decades of repressing so strongly what she had done and the demolition of the villages and the expulsion, that it took decades until she was walking in a certain forest and suddenly she remembered that she was standing in a place where a village had once stood. Have you also had experiences of this kind?

Amnon Neumann: Oh, experiences of this kind? Yes. I did but I wasn’t shocked anymore. I used to be shocked by what I’d been through.

Question: Can you maybe tell us?

Lia Tarachansky: You don’t want to talk?

Amnon Neumann: Come on! Do you want me to tell you that I shot at a pickup truck full of people? (coughing) Nonsense. It didn’t change the essence of the whole Nakba.

From the audience: But if we can understand how you repressed it, maybe we’ll be able to understand how the whole people of Israel still doesn’t know about the Nakba?

Woman in the audience: How come you, members of the battalion, never tried to sit together, to talk, to bring back memories?

Amnon Neumann: No. Uh, no, we had reunions years later.

Woman continuing: To try, after you sobered up didn’t you try…

Amnon Neumann: No, there was no one to do it with. We had company, battalion, brigade, Palmach reunions, right? In the end I stopped going and my wife got very angry. I said, I don’t want to hear them. They are always just telling about themselves. How it was here and how it was there. No one was thinking critically. How did you put it? Morally speaking, moral paralysis. It was moral paralysis.

Eitan Bronstein: But now you said something important. You keep saying all the time that it’s a war and that in a war terrible things happen.

Amnon Neumann: That’s right.

Eitan Bronstein: On the other hand, from your descriptions and from what you are saying and hinting here and there about having participated in horrible things as well, that’s not exactly the description of a war. Is this what you mean by “war”?

Amnon Neumann: As I told you, the horrors of war are as hard as the battles. I said it. These horrors, the horrible things that in a war are often worse than the war. Worse things, that is, when women are killed, when you kill children, all the horrors surrounding war, not surrounding the battle, they are worse than the battles. It’s called “moraot” [horrors] in Hebrew. Not “me’oraot” [events], but “moraot” of the war. The horrible things of war.

Eitan Bronstein: You mean, cases where civilians get killed. Are you referring to these kinds of things?

Amnon Neumann: Exactly.

Question: Amnon, can you perhaps tell us after all, if not about a specific event, at least a little bit in principle about the method? Really the method?

Amnon Neumann: There was no method.

Question continuing: The method of the expulsion, how it was done.

Amnon Neumann: Oh, the method of the expulsion! They would come to a village, shoot in the air, and the villagers had no weapons, they had nothing, they packed their things and fled. Then sometimes they would shoot after them and sometimes they didn’t, and that was all.

Question continuing: And what would you do after that, leave the village? Burn it down?

Amnon Neumann: There was so little in the village, as I said, in certain known cases we burned the village down and in other cases we would leave it. No one… there was nothing to steal. Look, there was nothing to loot there. They were as poor as church mice. There was nothing to steal. Me, the only looting I took, I found this kind of prayer rug, I put it in my pit, where I slept for three months.

Amir Hallel: In the south, in the area where you were in the south, in the Negev, were prisoners taken from among the villagers, or were people allowed to run away?

Amnon Neumann: Yes, yes. They were usually allowed to run away. If there were cases…
From the audience: There weren’t any prisoners or things like that?

Amnon Neumann: Egyptian prisoners?
From the audience: No, villagers.

Amnon Neumann: No. If there were prisoners they would be killed immediately.
From the audience: Can you tell about the occupation of Beersheba?

Amnon Neumann: There wasn’t much of an Egyptian force there, and wherever the Egyptians were attacked they didn’t hold out. I saw it in the cannons, when we conquered the cannons. We killed about 80 Egyptians there. So what? In two hours the cannons were in our hands, we had nothing to do with them. No one among us, even the company commander and battalion commander didn’t know, they had never in their life seen a cannon.

Amir Hallel: From the cannons did you continue into the town?

Amnon Neumann: No, it was enough. From the second company so many were killed, from the “Negev Animals”. You don’t move forward just like that. From Beit Hanoun. It wasn’t Beit Hanoun then.

Woman from the audience: I heard about an expulsion method in which three sides of a village would be closed off and one side left open where they wanted the expulsion to go. Was that a method you also used?

Amnon Neumann: That’s right. They would position one squad here, one squad here, one there, shoot in the air, not even straight at them, and they would run away by themselves, they had nothing to defend themselves with.

Woman in the audience: But they understood that it’s the only direction.

Amnon Neumann: They knew they had to get to Gaza, and they knew the directions better than us.

Eitan Bronstein: Amnon, I want to ask you something after all about those horrors that you find it difficult to talk about, and I understand that, but can you say something about afterward, let’s say, would it come up in conversations among the soldiers, for example? After all, you did do things, and you were adults, you did difficult things. Would you later share your experiences?

Amnon Neumann: It wasn’t difficult. Who was it difficult for? For the squad commander who gave the order, for the soldier who pulled the trigger? It wasn’t difficult. It was completely natural—we had to do it. If not, they would slaughter us. Don’t think that if it were the other way around it would have been better. It would have been much worse. There is no doubt about it.

Public hearing at Zochrot, 61 Ibn Gvirol St., Tel-Aviv, June 17, 2010. The audience consisted of about twenty people. Initiated and organized by Amir Hallel. The testimony was video-recorded by Lia Tarachansky. Miri Barak prepared the transcription. Eitan Bronstein edited, summarized, and added footnotes. Translated to English by Asaf Kedar.

Without Comment – Israel's Education Minister Condemns School Students Participation in Human Rights March

2012-01-14T05:49:00.002Z

Education Ministry blasts Israeli Arab school for taking students to human rights march

30.12.53. Ha'aretz

'The students carried signs against racism, house demolitions, etc., which violates the director general's circular [i.e. ministry regulations],' ministry tells school.

By Talila Nesher Tags: Jewish education Tel Aviv

The Education Ministry reprimanded the Arara High School and demanded clarifications after the school participated in a human rights march in Tel Aviv at the beginning of the month.

"The students carried signs against racism, house demolitions, etc., which violates the director general's circular [i.e. ministry regulations]," stated the letter sent to the school.
Human rights March Tel Aviv

Thousands of Israelis march for human rights in Tel Aviv, December 10, 2011.

"This was a praiseworthy initiative by the students as part of their assignment in civics class," countered one of the school's teachers. "What better way to express civic involvement and internalize the material?"

A bus with students from the tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades went to the march, which was sponsored by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, on Friday three weeks ago, another teacher said. All the students had approval from their parents and all the students chose to participate, with the encouragement of the student council.

"It was a celebration of human rights," the teacher said. "There were students who said at the end of the march that this was one of the most important and significant days in their lives."
Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar - Emil Salman

"A thousand civics classes couldn't give what that hour they spent there could," she added.

But in its letter to the school, the ministry objected to the fact that "the students participated in a demonstration in the framework of a civics lesson on the subject of human rights" and carried placards, saying this goes against ministry regulations. It therefore asked the ministry's regional supervisor and the school's supervisor to deal with the matter and report back to the ministry.

The signs were prepared by the students at their own initiative, said one of the school's senior staff members. "The signs were against racism, for peace, equality and social justice. Did anyone thereby say that the state is racist?"

In its response to the ministry, the school quoted Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar's message in honor of International Human Rights Day in November: "Your role as educators, who serve as guides for your students, is to teach them that alongside protecting and defending human rights, there is an expectation that they demonstrate involvement and personal responsibility," Sa'ar wrote then.

No comment had been received from either the ministry or ACRI as of press time on Tursday night.

Israeli Diplomats Find It All But Impossible to Defend Israel –

2012-01-14T04:43:00.004Z

The Honeymoon is Over

How sad. All is doom and gloom at the annual Israeli Ambassadors get together. The toll of continuing Palestinian deaths (117 Palestinians last year, 1 Israeli), anti-democratic legislation galore, the banning of Nakba commemorations, attacks on NGO’s, allowing Jewish ‘community standards’ panels to reject Arabs who wish to live in ‘Jewish’ villages, are making it difficult to defend what is left of Israel’s reputation.

And coupled with that a fascist for Foreign Minister over them. Indeed Israel's popularity has only gone up among the worlds' fascist parties! There is only one thing today that sustains Israel and that is the fact that Israel is seen as a stable base in the midst of an uncertain and unstable Middle East. Problem is that Israel itself is becoming more unstable - and that’s only its Jewish element.

Israel depends more than the Apartheid regime (South Africa) ever did on political support. South Africa had diamonds, coal and gold in abundance. Israel has little in the way of natural resources. And yet today it has all but lost the political argument. In Britain virtually every trade union has pro-Palestinian policy and is affiliated to PSC. There was a time when it was the Left (Tony Benn and Eric Heffer) who belonged to Labour Friends of Israel. Today no self-respecting left-winger (not that there are many left in Labour now) would be seen dead in LFI, whereas 80% of Tory MPs are in the CFI. That is the measure of the change in British politics.

The key obstacles is ironically the Palestinian misleadership. Both Fatah and Hamas have one goal – how best to repress their own population. It was ironic that when demonstrations were shattering the rest of the Arab world in the West Bank and Gaza, the respective security forces were using violence to stop people demonstrating.

The other difference is political. Hamas supports 2 states openly now, whereas Fateh is content for 1 state and a mini-bantustan. Problem is that even the latter is unobtainable. You don’t have to support 1 state to recognise that that is already the situation, only the democratic rights of such a state are missing. With Palestinian unity around a principled leadership, we could see the crumbling of what is left of Israel’s reputation.

Tony Greenstein

Envoys worldwide feel brunt of Israel's worsening image

In annual meeting 100 Israeli diplomats discuss influence of contentious domestic legislation on Israel's diplomatic standing; Foreign Ministry indicates an erosion in 'special relationship' with U.S.

On Tuesday morning, 100 Israeli ambassadors gathered on Mount Scopus, and together with their host, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, looked out onto Silwan and the Temple Mount. Later they continued toward Abu-Dis, there they peered at the border area and the separation fence. Last year, Barkat and the city he manages caused many of these Israeli diplomats to work overtime, preparing explanations to foreign ministries or media outlets in the countries where they serve. It can be assumed that in 2012, their work will only get harder.

The annual ambassadors' meeting is met with ambivalence by many Israeli diplomats. On the one hand, it provides an opportunity to visit the country for a week, and to be briefed on political matters, as well as internal ministry gossip. On the other hand, instead of a Christmas vacation, these sequestered ambassadors spend long days, from morning to night, inside the Foreign Ministry's auditorium.

The atmosphere in the ambassadors' gathering moved from depression to catharsis. On the one hand, they gripe about escalating international isolation, whereas on the other hand they congratulate one another upon the stopping of the Gaza flotilla sequel via diplomatic means, and upon the temporary derailing of the Palestinian statehood move in the United Nations, launched in September.

Ambassadors who arrived from European states and North America talked about how they are becoming increasingly hated and unwanted, while ambassadors from Asia and Africa spoke optimistically about new markets and opportunities for cooperation in areas such as agriculture and medicine. "Exports to China are at $2.5 billion a year; why isn't this figure $10 billion?" asked one ambassador.

Yet, in contrast to past annual gatherings, one topic kept coming up during all the discussions, this being an understanding that developments in Israel's domestic arena have a negative impact upon the country's reputation overseas. Within hours, ultra-Orthodox men who spit at children in Beit Shemesh, or who threaten women bus passengers in Ashdod, cause huge diplomatic damage to Israel around the world. To garner the extent of such damage, it sufficed to read one of this week's The New York Times editions, which carried three lengthy reports about discrimination of women in Israel, Egypt and Somalia.

Many ambassadors raised this issue during meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and in additional discussions. "Once, Israel's democracy was our calling card around the world," reflected one ambassador. "Today, there's a feeling that this is no longer the case."

The ambassadors noted that their workdays are filled up with efforts to explain legislative initiatives against left-wing organizations and mosques, and acts of religious and right-wing extremism. Overseas, these are not marginal subjects. Quite often, the ambassadors say, we don't have answers to questions referred to us.

Nor did the ambassadors really come away from this annual meeting with answers. Netanyahu reiterated that steps must be taken against the exclusion of women, but in the same breath he points out that British critics who attack Israel for trends of right-wing violence, were not so successful in their dealings with rioters in London.

National security advisor Yaakov Amidror minimized the problem of religious extremism. "Portraying Israel as though it is represented by the Sicarri in Beit Shemesh is akin to depicting Americans as though they were the Amish from somewhere in the middle of the US," he said.

Bleak Forecasts

Eran Etzion, head of the Foreign Ministry's policy planning division, is known for his elaborately prepared power-point presentations. Months of analyses, arguments and discussions are packed densely into dozens of slides which present the ministry's annual diplomatic assessment.

As was the case last year, Etzion's presentation at this year's gathering did not leave much room for optimism. One of the slides was particularly upsetting. A big "X" was drawn over the words "peace process;" and the explanation accompanying the slide declared that the process is dead. At least it will not come to life during the coming year.

The Foreign Ministry's view is that developments in the region have foreclosed any prospect of renewed talks between Israel and the Palestinians during 2012. Despite this pessimistic forecast, a virtual consensus has congealed among the ambassadors and also Netanyahu aides Yaakov Amidror and Yitzhak Molcho, holding that the continued diplomatic impasse hurts Israel.

One slide pointed to an equally worrisome trend of "erosion in the special relationship with the U.S." In a separate panel, Washington Ambassador Michael Oren spoke about how relations with the American government are strong and close, and even proudly divulged public opinion poll results which show that support for Israel is stable in the U.S. public.

Ido Aharoni, Israel's Consul-General in New York, a wizard when it comes to polls, interrupted Oren and proposed that he look at the opinion surveys more closely. "Our image in America is worse than it was in the past, particularly among the young educated sectors," stated Aharoni, and explained that once the data are broken down, it appears that entire sectors in the U.S. might not have transferred their allegiance to the Palestinians, yet have simply lost enthusiasm for Israel.

Another worrisome trend in Etzion's presentation involved the European Union's economic crisis. A third of Israel's exports goes to EU countries and thus, Etzion stressed, Israel's economy is bound to take a hit, even it is somewhat delayed. If anyone needed proof of the extent to which the economic crisis worries Israel's political-security establishment, it was furnished in a briefing provided by Mossad chief Tamir Pardo to the ambassadors. For no less than 20 minutes, the Mossad director spoke about the threat to the economy. He devoted less than five minutes to the Iranian threat.

Why did Lieberman read from the written text?

On Sunday afternoon, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman strolled into the large auditorium on the basement floor of the Foreign Ministry building in Jerusalem. Waiting for him were more than 100 senior Israeli diplomats who came from around the world for this third annual ambassadorial gathering; 20 journalists were also in the auditorium.

Lieberman opened with a joke about his relations with Israel's media and what he calls misunderstandings which occur in reports about his statements. "A woman phoned the Abu-Kabir forensic medicine institute and reported that her husband had been missing for four days," Lieberman said. "She wanted to check whether he had, heaven forbid, found his way to the autopsy room. The doctor asked how he might be identified, and she replied, 'he stutters.'"

After the joke, Lieberman delivered his speech. From his first day on the job, Lieberman's style has been free, spontaneous and undiplomatic. "Whoever wants peace, should prepare for war," he had a wont for saying. At the meeting two years ago he called on the ambassadors to stop abasing themselves to states around the world, and at last year's gathering he called Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan a liar.

Surprisingly, on Sunday Lieberman pulled out a stash of papers and read his speech from a written text. The speech was thoughtful, orderly and even rather careful. Journalists who thirsted for screaming headlines went away disappointed. Some ambassadors attributed Lieberman's uncharacteristic speech to criticism leveled against him as a result of praise he lavished upon Russia's recent elections. "Perhaps had he read from the text during the photo opportunity in Moscow, his thoughts would have sounded different," one ambassador mused.

On Wednesday Lieberman explained that there is no connection between his Putin remarks and the speech he delivered to the ambassadors. He recalled that he also read from a text during his speech at the UN; he said that his speech this week was of comparable significance. He believes that there is uncertainty surrounding Israel's diplomatic situation, that Netanyahu is conducting one policy approach, Peres is upholding another policy outlook, and Barak maintains a third approach. He thought that a written speech might alleviate some of this uncertainty. This time, as in the past, he declared, his policy approach is the most realistic.

Lieberman's source of inspiration: Golda Meir and Mapai

During his speech, Lieberman cited remarks made by then Prime Minister Golda Meir before the Mapai party's main membership, in June 1969. Lieberman referred to Meir's speech in an attempt to substantiate his own claims about the hopelessness of the peace process. "She said some things which were as correct in her day as they are now," said Lieberman, and then quoted Meir:

"Our politicians argue about annexation or non-annexation, about occupied or liberated territories, about whether we are occupiers or liberators, as though the question of whether peace will come tomorrow depends upon this internal argument among us…I think that the tragic dispute between ourselves and the Arabs was never about territory, just as it is not about the territories today; then and now, the argument was about one thing: we want to live, and they don't agree to out existence on any territory at all."

Lieberman forgot to mention just one small detail. Four years after Meir made these remarks, enveloped by the post Six Day War euphoria, more than 2,200 Israelis were killed in a war that might have been prevented. But Golda preferred hanging on to the Sinai Peninsula and the settlements. It is to be hoped that Lieberman is mistaken, and that what was correct in 1969, does not hold true today.

The 'Only Democracy in the Middle East' Gaols 23 Elected Members of the Palestine Legislative Assembly

2012-01-14T03:43:00.005Z

More than 40 Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (MPLC) kidnapped since 2006

London - 2/1/2012

“UFree Network: Israeli occupation keeps until today 23 MPLCs in detention"

Israeli occupation authorities continue to captive twenty three elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council for their political activities, and are subject to illegal administrative detention without charge.

According to UFree Network, in an exclusive report published on Monday 2/1/2012, the Israeli occupation has detained more than forty MPLC since mid-2006, and still insists on arresting twenty-three of them at the moment.

The report added that "It is crystal clear that Israeli illegal practices against members of the Palestinian legislative council are a blatant violation of international conventions and laws, which criminalize the abduction of members of the governing and elected bodies, and arbitrarily detaining them. The report considered it" an act of vengeance and it is unacceptable. "

The report pointed out that an Article (34) of Geneva's Fourth Convention states that: "taking hostages is prohibited", especially if this matter jeopardizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another entity, as confirmed by the first article of the General Assembly of the United Nations of 14/12/1974 concerning the definition of aggression as: "the use of armed force by one State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any way inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations."

1- MPLC Ahmad Saadat - Secretary General of the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine

(Isolated for years in solitary confinement and banned from visits)

Saadat has been abducted by the Israeli authorities for five years, where they kidnapped him from the prison of Jericho in Palestine on March 14, 2006 after it attacked the headquarters of the prison and surrounding it for 12 hours.

One day after he was abducted, the Israeli authorities announced its intention to give Saadat to trial, and he is the highest political figure seized by Israel in its prisons for two and a half years of investigation and administrative detention before they issue a verdict against MPLC Ahmed Saadat, at Ofer Prison Court, which sentenced him to 30 years on December 25, 2008.

MPLC Saadat has endured several ways and forms of abuse and revenge, like transferring him to various prisons, and ill-treatment by Israeli interrogators and prison guards and keeping him in solitary confinement cells since March 9, 2009.

Israeli authorities have worked on isolating him in solitary confinement for six months without allowing him to see the other prisoners, and after that period, they isolated another prisoner with him for 23 hours in a closed room with a small closed window. He was allowed an hour a day out of the cell to another area, also closed, no sun, and with chains around his ankles.

In November 2011, the Israeli military court extended the period of isolated confinement for another whole year. He has been also forbid from family visits for four years, and the authorities are giving hard time for lawyers and the Red Cross representatives who want to visit him.

Aggression extended to MP Saadat's wife as well, Ms. Abla Saadat, where the occupation forces arrested her unjustly for three months, then they imposed house arrest on her. Ms. Saadat reported that the Israeli intelligence officer, who conducted the interrogation with her, told her, "we will keep you for 3 months and then we will let you go, however, tell your husband, Saadat, that we have targeted his brother and arrested his wife this time, but next time we will target his children."

The arrest of MPLC Saadat is genuinely political; he is the highest detained Palestinian political figure, and elected MPLC. However, the Israeli authorities are trying to frame him for the murder of Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Zeevi, but when the Israel prosecutors failed to find evidence to support their claims against Saadat; they transferred him to Ofer Military Court, while the rest of the defendants were transferred to the Central Court in Jerusalem where their trial was held there for the same accusation of killing the minister.

Whilst the list of accusations at the military court in Ofer lacked any reference to the assassination of Zeevi, they proceeded to fabricate charges of activities carried out by Saadat in 1998 and 1999 while he was living a normal life in the city of Ramallah, just under the Israeli noses.

2- MPLC Ahmed Al-Haj

He is the elected MPLC of the province of Nablus, being 71 years old; he is the oldest of the detained MPLCs. Israeli forces arrested the MPLC Al-Haj in 2008 for his political activities and for his position as an MP in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

He spent 15 months in the Israeli prisons, and then he got re-arrested on Tuesday 07/06/2011, the authorities attacked his home in the late hours of night, and started to search and tamper in Al-Haj's belongings, and he was transferred to detention for six months, then they renewed this period for another six months on 06/12/2011. By then, MPLC Al-Haj became the oldest living detainee, not to mention the Israeli complete negligence of Al-Haj's parliamentary immunity.

Al-Haj suffers from health problems due to his old age, lack of medical care in the Israeli prisons, and having to stay in harsh conditions; a health report witnessed by UFree Network, that Al-Haj has lost 70% of his ability to hear, and a significance loss of the sense of taste, suffering from sinusitis, which caused him a constant cold throughout the year, along with other health problems of the urinary tract and prostate.

In addition to the complicated situation of the prisoner MPLC Al-Haj, who has been kept in Israeli Megiddo prison, the Israeli authorities denied his family the right to visit him in prison, where his sons and many family members requested for a visit, which was answered by refusal and denial.

Al-Haj's son reported that the permits of visits are strictly banned since June 2011, and they haven't heard any news from his father.

3 - MPLC Jamal Tirawi - spokesman of Fatah's parliamentary Party

Jamal Tirawi is a member in the Legislative Council of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement "Fatah", born in 1966, lives in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus and his roots goes back to the occupied town of Tira.

Tirawi was arrested four times for a sum of 14 years in prison in Israeli prisons for his political activities with "Fatah".

He was kidnapped from his home by Israeli authorities during a military operation on 29/5/2007, as he was a media spokesman for Fatah's parliamentary party in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

The investigation with Tirawi lasted more than four years, during which he lived in difficult and harsh conditions of arrest, and then finally he was trialed by the Israeli Military Court, "Salem". He was sentenced to 30 years in prison on 30/10/2011, after a legal battle that lasted for more than 70 court sessions.

Ahmed Betawi, the counsel of "International Solidarity Foundation for Human Rights" stated that the Israel prosecution charged MPLC Tirawi for his relations with one of the groups of "Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades" which is the military wing of "Fatah" which launched "attacks against some Israeli targets", a charge absolutely denied by Tirawi, stressing that his arrest and trial are purely political, and related to his position in the Parliament and political activity as a spokesman for the Fatah Party in the Parliament.

The Media department of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas office reported to have special documentation that proves the existence of a formal Palestinian-Israeli agreement to not to prosecute or arrest MPLC Tirawi, in which Israel pledged to keep away from whom are "wanted", so they call them.

The Palestinian Presidential office condemned the arrest of Tirawi, as a serious violation of the agreement, and a blatant infringement of the symbols of the democratically elected Palestinian legitimacy, this contradicts with the most basic rules of international conventions and the UN that criminalize attacks on members of the legislative authority of any political entity.

4- MPLC Abdel Rahman Zeidan

From Tulkarm, a refugee from Khirbet village, he is 45 years old, holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Alabama in the United States of America, and a Masters degree in Highway Engineering and Transportation.

5 - MPLC Maher Badr

From Hebron of the West Bank, he is 55 years old, holds a PhD in Islamic Law, and worked as a lecturer at Hebron and Jerusalem open Universities before he was arrested by the Israeli occupation authorities.

6 - MPLC Mahmoud Ramahi

Was elected as secretary of the Palestinian Legislative Council, a resident of Al-Bireh in Ramallah, he is 48 years old. He studied medicine at the University of Rome, Italy, and holds the Palestinian Board certificate in the specialties of anesthesia and intensive care.

He served as a founding member of the Scientific Medical Association and chairman of the Medical Center in Ramallah, before being arrested. MPLC Ramahi is a popular respectful figure among the Palestinians and the various factions and politicians.

7 - MPLC Khalil Musa Robee

From the city of Nablus in the West Bank, he is 52 years old. He specializes in accounting and business administration. He was the head of a number of associations, service organizations, charity foundations and popular reform committees. He was the director of Southern West Bank Electricity Company.

8 - MPLC Ayman Daraghmeh

He was arrested three times by Israeli authorities since he held legislative powers after becoming a member of the Palestinian legislative council. He was first arrested in mid-2006 with his fellow MPs and ministers in the Tenth Palestinian Government.

The Israeli authorities rearrested him in 2009 and he was transferred to administrative detention, then the Israeli military court "Ofer" extended the period for four times causing him to stay in prison until late 2010. And then the Israeli authorities rearrested him on 14/12/2011 after storming into his house in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank.

9 – MPLC Mohamed Ismail Al-Tal

He is a subject to illegal administrative detention in the Israeli prisons, he was firstly arrested when he won the elections in 2006, then released after 44 months of detention, then he was rearrested after a few months, and transferred to administrative detention until this moment.

10- MPLC Nayef Al Rjoub

MPLC and former Minister Nayef Rajoub was a subject to various arrests since 1989, he spent a total of 8 years in Israeli prisons, He has been transferred between a number of Israeli prisons and subjected to various forms of illegal practices such as administrative detention, solitary confinement , and now he is kept in the Negev desert prison.

Rjoub played many significant roles in the Palestinian life; he was the head of charity and service association. He is elected MPLC with the highest votes in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in the West Bank.

He was the Minister of "Awqaf" and Religious Affairs in the Tenth Palestinian Government, and is the author of numerous novels and literary works.

11-MPLC Fadel Hamdan

From Ramallah, he is 58 years old. He is one of the figures of social reform in his city, where citizens turn to him to seek advice to solve family and clan problems.

12- MPLC Omar Abdul-Razek

MPLC Abdul-Razek is a professor of economics at Najah National University for 20 years. He received his education from the University of Iowa in the United States of America.

MPLC Abdul-Razek was a subject of various illegal procedures and kept under administrative detention, he is now in Megiddo prison, where the occupation authorities extended the administrative detention under claiming the existence of a confidential file of him which clearly violates the international law.

MPLC Abdul-Razek was the Minister of Finance in the Tenth Palestinian government.

13 - MPLC Mohammed Abu Tir

From the village of Sur Baher of the city of Jerusalem, was arrested by the Israeli forces in 2006 with his other MPLCs and ministers elected, and sentenced for 52 months. Once he was released, the Israeli intelligence issued an order to exile him and other MPLCs of Jerusalem and former ministers.

The Israeli forces were able to re-arrest him again in late 2010.

14 - MPLC Mohammed Natsheh

From Hebron in the West Bank, was born in 1958 and holds a bachelor's degree in Islamic Law, and worked as a teacher of the University Palestinians Association. He was subjected to regular arrests, and then re-arrested in 2006 with his fellow MPLCs and ministers in The Tenth Palestinian Government.

15 - MPLC Hassan Yousef

From the city of Ramallah, he is 56 years old, a popular prominent political figure in Hamas leadership, and has the respect Palestinian factions and on good terms with them. Was arrested in 2006 with other MPLCs and ministers elected, and was released during a few months to be re-arrested again.

16 - MPLC Mohammed Mutlaq Abu Gehisha:

From Hebron in the West Bank, was regularly arrested by the Israeli forces, as well as his sons. His wife says that the Israeli army was intentionally breaking into his home and breaking its contents in each arrest, especially after he won a seat in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

17 - MPLC Nizar Ramadan

From Hebron, holds a master's degree in Contemporary Islamic Studies, works as a writer and journalist and has published several books, he held several positions. He is a leader in union of journalists of Palestine, and treasurer of the Association of Charity Foundation.

He was arrested several times in the Israeli prisons; the last arrest started mid-2011 as he is a subject to illegal administrative detention.

18 – MPLC Hatem Kafisha

A reformer and social activist, he held several service positions and is kept now in the Israeli Negev prison. He is a leading figure of the prisoners inside the prison.

19 - MPLC Samir Al-Qady

From the town of Surif in the West Bank, he is 55 years old. He studied medicine in one of the Ukrainian universities, and served as director of Al-Ahly Hospital in addition to his private medical practice.

He was arrested in 2006 along with his fellow MPLCs and ministers, then was released after 3 years, then re-arrested in 16/6/2011 and still under the illegal administrative detention.

20 - MPLC Azzam Salhab

From the city of Hebron of the West Bank, holds a Master's degree in the Islamic Law, was arrested along with his fellow MPLCs and ministers, he spent 18 months in Israeli prisons, and then he was re-arrested early in 2011.

The Israeli authorities renewed his detention for a day, then arrested for the third time during the current Palestinian legislative session on 03.09.2011 and he was sentenced for illegal administrative detention again.

21 - MPLC Marwan Barghouthi

Born in the village of Cooper, northwest of Ramallah, he is 53 years old. He studied history and political science at the University of Birzeit, where he headed the Student Union, and holds a master's degree in International Affairs.

MPLC Barghouthi was targeted for several Israeli assassination attempts, when he was arrested by the occupation authorities, the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon then said that he regretted arresting Barghouthi alive and he preferred if he were burnt into ashes".

Shaul Mofaz, Israeli Defense Minister, commented on the abduction of Barghouti saying, "Arresting Barghouthi is a miracle, and he will remain in prison until his death."

He was sentenced in 2004 for life and forty years in prison, the maximum penalty demanded by the prosecution. Barghouti stated at the court hearing, addressing the judges, "You are committing a war crime issuing this illegal sentence, just like the pilots of the Israeli army who drop bombs on Palestinian civilians."

Barghouti said, "If the price of my people's freedom is losing my own, then I am willing to pay that price."

22 – MPLC Anwar Mohammed Al-Zaboun

From the city of Jerusalem, he holds a master's degree in physics from the University of Kiel in the United Kingdom.

MPLC Al-Zaboun was a student activist and a member of the Student Union at the University of Abu Dis in Jerusalem. He was arrested in 2006 along with his fellow MPLCs and ministers elected.

23 - MPLC Nasser Abdul Jawad

From the city of Salfit of the West Bank, holds a PhD degree. He was arrested from his home in the village of Deir Ballout due to his position in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

The Israeli military court renewed his illegal detention on 25/10/2011 for an additional 4 months.

31 Disabled People Die Proving They're Unfit to Work

2012-01-14T03:12:00.009Z

Liar, Liam Byrne MP, Shadow Work & Pensions Secretary 'Forgets' that New Labour Began the Attack on Claimants & the Disabled

As the article in the Scottish Herald shows, at least 31 people have died waiting to see if they are ill enough to retain their benefits. Some of them have literally been killed by the cuts made ‘necessary’ to ensure that the bankers, crooks and swindlers who run our system are allowed to continue as before.

Yet we have New Labour’s Liam Byrne in the Guardian on Monday ‘Labour urges radical rethink on welfare’ arguing for a tough line on welfare. No he wasn’t talking about the welfare that the bankers and fellow parasites have had lavished on them, or allowing Vodafone, News International and a host of other companies to avoid tax.

Like his war criminal predecessor Blair, this toughness was reserved for the unemployed and poor, whose fecklessness and laziness has caused them to be unemployed. Like the Tories and Liberal-Democrats, the poor are to be blamed for their own situation.

There is nothing that the Tories are now doing that New Labour didn’t begin before them. It was New Labour which originally proposed an attack on DLA (they proposed scrapping it and Attendance Allowance) for those 65 and over. It was of course New Labour that abolished Incapacity Benefit and introduced ESA. It ill behoves them to now complain the system is in a mess. Indeed much of the pioneering work for the Tories has come from New Labour’s Lord Hutton and Frank Field MP. Byrne himself suggests in his article A William Beveridge for this century's welfare state Byrne says that ‘housing benefit alone is costing the UK over £20bn a year. That is simply too high.’

The obvious answer to anyone on the Left is reduce rents, bring back rent controls. But that would affect the propertied classes. Instead he argues for the long-term unemployed to attend ‘a work or retraining centre’. In other words a new Workhouse. But when it comes to the Tory-Lib attacks on the disabled, Byrne simply lies. ‘I think Beveridge would have looked aghast at the government's plans to axe disability benefits.’ Perhaps he has forgotten New Labour’s record. More a case of selective amnesia for this former immigration minister.

31 deaths during wait for benefits judgment

Kate Devlin UK Political Correspondent

More than 30 benefits claimants have died while appealing against a judgment that they were fit to work, official figures show, leading to accusations the system is in chaos.

Tribunal centres across the UK, including in Scotland, are also being forced to hold Saturday sittings to deal with disputed cases, politicians have been told.

Last night Labour called on the Tory-LibDem Coalition at Westminster to get a grip on the situation before it spirals "completely out of control".

Almost four in 10 cases are currently overturned on appeal, a proportion campaigners say is unacceptable.

A series of written parliamentary answers has revealed the strain on the system. They show that centres around the country, including in Dundee, Hamilton, Cardiff, Plymouth and Wrexham, have been forced to hold Saturday sittings in recent months. Other centres, including Newcastle, South Shields, Leeds and Sheffield, are due to sit at weekends from this month.

In a parliamentary written answer, Chris Grayling, the Conservative minister, said 31 people had died while awaiting their appeal in the three years to last October.

Although there was no indication how they died, The Herald revealed earlier this year that two Scots who died while waiting to challenge their decision had died of the conditions that led them to apply for Incapacity Benefit in the first place.

The company responsible for assessing if disability or sickness claimants are fit to work is also struggling to meet demands to change its operations, the answers also show.

Atos, a French firm, is being paid £100 million a year by the Government as it seeks to cut the cost of incapacity benefit. But the company has faced growing criticism over its handling of the cases.

Following a report designed to reduce the number of incorrect assessments, Atos was told to put staff in job centres, where the final decisions are made. But Mr Grayling also admitted a shortage of resources meant that recommendation had yet to be implemented.

A telephone helpline was being introduced as an "interim arrangement until Atos is in a position to reintroduce the deployment of healthcare professionals in benefit centres", he said.

Since October 2008, all those applying for a new benefit, the Employment and Support Allowance, which is designed to replace incapacity benefit, have been assessed if they are fit to work.

In April last year Atos also began reassessing all those currently receiving incapacity benefit, following pilots in Aberdeen and Burnley.

If trends continue, there will be 240,000 appeals over this financial year – a rise of 30% on the previous year, and at a cost of £60m in administration alone.

Tom Greatrex, the MP who obtained the information, warned the system was in chaos.

Mr Greatrex, the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, has highlighted the case of one of his constituents who was deemed fit to work despite suffering from Parkinson's and who eventually had his case overturned on appeal.
"The Tory-led Government must get a grip on this system before it spirals completely out of control," he said.

"The rocketing cost of appeals, the huge rise in the number of Tribunal judges, and the introduction of Saturday sittings add up to one thing: the Work Capability Assessment is unfit for purpose."

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said under the older incapacity benefit system a higher proportion of decisions, 50%, had been overturned on appeal.

Atos last night referred inquiries to the DWP.

Brighton PSC Hosts Speaker from Jordan Valley-Tubas

2012-01-14T01:27:00.005Z

The Jordan Valley & Tubas - Annexed in All But Name

When Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 Yigal Allon, the then Foreign Minister, produced the Allon Plan. It was based on the ‘security’ needs of Israel and the purpose, then as now, was to divest itself of the people whilst keeping the land and resources. The intention was to annex the Jordan Valley itself, East Jerusalem and what the Gush Etzion bloc.

From the very start 70.5 km2 of land around Jerusalem was annexed and integrated it into “Jerusalem municipality”. In the intervening 40 plus years, Israel has surrounded Jerusalem with huge settlements, in direct contravention of international law, and the building is still continuing today. If left unchallenged the settlements will eventually cover a vast area stretching right across to Jericho in the Jordan Valley, with Palestinians being wiped off their land in the process.

During the same period Israel has taken control of 95% of the land and 98% of the water resources in the Jordan Valley. It has not yet legally’ annexed the Jordan Valley but in practice this is exactly what has happened.

Illegal Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley are continuing to take more and more Palestinian land, supported by the Israeli Military Civil Administration.

At the same time there is a growing Palestinian movement to challenge Israel through direct action, and developing local infrastructure. This is inspiring a network of international organisations to work in solidarity with them. We are just one small part of that network.

Brighton PSC hosted a speaker, Mahmoud, who had come over from Tubas. Despite having a visa, he was held by British immigration officials at Calais for 7 hours and not told why his visa had been cancelled nor indeed by it had been reinstated. Why did this happen? Because what these racist officials described as ‘inconsistencies’ in his visa application i.e. he also worked on a farm as well as being a project manager. He hadn’t mentioned the former!

It was only thanks to the intervention of Caroline Lucas MP that Mahmoud was able to continue his journey and there is little doubt that Israeli ‘Intelligence’ played its part in him being singled out for harassment. After being held for 7 hours, without any information being provided, he was not told the visa was cancelled or reinstated, he was allowed to go on his way.

In Brighton’s first Palestinian café, run by a PSC member Adam, a packed meeting heard Mahmoud speak, with the aid of a translator Fatih, about the conditions in the Jordan Valley. Virtually no Palestinian construction or infrastructure is allowed – no homes, schools, hospitals, roads can be built and schools that have been built or extensions added are demolished. Water pipes pass underneath Tubas, the main town, but no Palestinian can touch the water. Wells can only be dug to a certain depth, preventing the irrigation of Palestinian fields, unless you get permission to dig deeper. Permission is never granted. Yet the settlers have unlimited access to fresh water.

Nor can Palestinian farmers let their animals graze near the settlements and thereby indirectly benefit from the water because they will be detained and the animals confiscated.

Farmers therefore face two problems. One is lack of water to irrigate crops and the other is that even if they manage to harvest the crops they cannot get them to market easily, because of Israeli checkpoints that deliberately delay the lorries, often meaning the crops rot before they can be sold.

Despite the de-facto annexation spirits are high and people are determined to resist. Merely living on one’s land is in itself part of the struggle. Israel he said, has a plan. And that plan is expulsion or transfer. The Palestinians are surplus to requirements.

Mahmoud’s main role is to rehabilitate buildings which have been demolished or damaged by Israel, along with a group of people. He is, as he emphasised, not the ‘boss’ but also one of the workers. The Jordan Valley is Area C under the Oslo Accords and Israel considers it a ‘security zone’ where there is no Palestinian development. Palestinians main role is as hewers of wood and drawers of water on vast Israeli agricultural settlements.

In response to one question, about the impact of the Boycott Mahmoud said yes, the international Boycott of Israel had been felt. In particular the collapse of Agrexco into bankruptcy but also the greater attention paid to the treatment of Palestinian workers, e.g. refusal to pay people for when they have worked and the exploitation of the lack of Palestinian bargaining power.

Yet Mahmoud was nonetheless optimistic.

Tony Greenstein

Harry’s Place Praises Atzmon on BDS

2012-01-13T05:11:00.003Z

Harry’s Place: Atzmon is Right - The Academic Boycott is ‘book burning’

In the course of an otherwise demented blog seeking to ‘prove’ that opponents of Atzmon are in fact the same as him (a favourite bourgeois philosophy which holds that extremes are the same and polar opposites are really their equals), one of the regular posters, in the course of the usual ad hominems gives the game away. The argument of HP is quite simple – if you oppose Israel you are anti-Semitic therefore the opponents of Atzmon are no different from him.

Of course this involves small things like ignoring Israel’s far-right government, the evictions of Bedouin, the attacks on NGO’s etc. etc. but who cares on this Islamaphobic sewer of a site:

According to regular HP poster, Lamia, when Atzmon stated that:

“the academic boycott is ‘book burning’. On that at least Atzmon is correct.”

Atzmon has proved a very useful brush with which to tar the supporters of the Palestinians. A few fools like Gill Kaffash, Roy Ratcliffe, Tony Gratrext and Roy Bard (ftp) have been happy to play along with the Zionist Atzmon.

But first a joke by veteran Israeli peacenik, Uri Avnery with a core kernel of truth, i.e. that every fascist and far-right party of significance in Europe (bar the NPD in Germany and Jobbik in Hungary)

The New Anti-Semitism

By Uri Avnery, 07 August, 2011, Gush Shalom

The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, calls his boss, Adolf Hitler, by hell-phone.

“Mein Führer,” he exclaims excitedly. “News from the world. It seems we were on the right track, after all. Anti-Semitism is conquering Europe!”

“Good!” the Führer says, “That will be the end of the Jews!”

“Hmmm…well…not exactly, mein Führer. It looks as though we chose the wrong Semites. Our heirs, the new Nazis, are going to annihilate the Arabs and all the other Muslims in Europe.” Then, with a chuckle, “After all, there are many more Muslims than Jews to exterminate.”

“But what about the Jews?” Hitler insists.

“You won’t believe this: the new Nazis love Israel, the Jewish State - and Israel loves them!”

Harry’s Place is well known as a byword for bigotry, ad hominems and anti-Arab racism. Coupled of course with blind Zionism. Whilst being concerned about anti-Semitism in Palestine Solidarity Campaign, they have developed tunnel vision when it comes to the open support of the BNP for Israel and Zionism. They like to be reminded of the EDL’s connections with Zionism even less. Little things like the EDL parades with Israeli flags and its joining up with Zionist demonstrators as at Ahava.

Yet despite the fact that someone like Mad Mikey Ezra, an open collaborator with Atzmon, still posts, like Nelson they can only see what they want to see and that is ‘anti-Semitism’. In the tortured logic employed on the blog, those who oppose anti-Semitism and fascism are somehow the same as those who support it. Being opposed to the Israeli state, i.e. an anti-Zionist, is no different from being opposed to Jews per se, the old Zionist hymn tune.

Lamia’s comments came in an otherwise appalling blog, PSC supporters supporting Atzmon This was itself a response to an article by an Anthony Cooper who at least tried to make some differentiation between Jews opposed to Atzmon and those who support him.

Cooper's article 'A (small) Thank you to anti-Israel Jews a-small-thank-you-to-anti-israel-jews/ was based on his article in the Jewish Chronicle ‘The Jews who can distinguish antisemitism from anti-Israel’

In fact if anyone has collaborated with Atzmon it is members of HP itself. In an article ‘Gilad Atzmon and Jewishness’

David Toube, who used to run HP, on March 19th 2007, wrote how:

‘Last week, Mikey invited me for a drink with Gilad Atzmon. Mikey’s thoughts on Gilad and his worldview follow, below….. Is Gilad Atzmon a racist? Not in the narrow sense of being preoccupied by genetic differences between people, certainly. He is rather, I think, a ‘cultural essentialist’: if such a term exists.’

A cultural essentialist. In fact this is probably the least of Atzmon’s sins, given his record as a jazz player.

But Mikey, a regular HP poster, was not to be deterred. On the blog of Atzmon collaborator, Mary Rizzo, the following exchange occurred between Atzmon and Mikey Ezra:

‘Mikey, can you provide us with the criminal record of this Bugger-Rance. Is he on spent conviction like greenie l or is he just an ordinary liar? Gilad Atzmon | 03.12.07 - 8:00 pm | #
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have been very busy digging up stuff on Tony Greenstein - Roland Rance will have to wait for another day. Mikey | 03.12.07 - 8:53 pm | #
‘Mikey, I hope you do not mind me saying that, but your contribution for the pls solidarity movement is priceless. It is crucial that we all know about the racist record of this Greenpiss, a man who was banned time after time for being a racist and an anti Semite! I really want to believe that this revolting violent man will feel some shame and take some time off to think about it all. But I doubt it.’ Gilad Atzmon | 03.04.07 - 10:46 am | #

Again, again, I believe that Zionists like you can cope with philosophical thinking because Zionism is a Jewish ideological stand. RK, Ben Gurion and later Begin and Shmuel Tamir were operating within different interpretation of the very the same ideology. The political and legal aspects are nothing but a cover up of the real meaning of this saga. You can cope with it, Greenie and Brenner can't. However, Good luck with Greenie and thanks for all the info you gave us about this low being. Peace is the way forward
G
Gilad Atzmon | 03.08.07 - 4:02 pm |

Zionists Gnashing of Teeth Over Success of Proms Protest

2012-01-13T04:11:00.004Z

Zionists Call to prosecute anti-Israel Proms protesters

With reports that the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra were that upset by the disruption to their concert at the Royal Albert Hall, that they are considering never visiting these shores again, some lame, tame Zionist lawyers, have resorted to calling for the law to be used against us.

Bring it on I say. Unfortunately for them the Royal Albert Hall is in no mood to oblige, fearful of the political consequences. The talk is of ‘aggravated trespass’, but this is a very difficult and fraught prosecution. As in Scotland, where there was a failed attempt, the obvious charge is one of some for of incitement to racial hatred. There is only one problem. Between one-third and one-quarter of all the protestors were Jewish! It’s something an anti-semite like Gilad Atzmon disproves of, hence his charges that this was a Judeocentric protest. But whilst Atzmon sees Jews everywhere, it is unfortunately doubtful that the CPS will see it that way and with the obvious reluctance of the Royal Albert Hall then this unnamed group of Zionist lawyers will continue to gnash their teeth.

Pity really, because when I participated first in the Jerusalem Quartet protest and then the one against the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, I and others did it in the full expectation that we would be arrested. Such are the disappointments of life.

Tony Greenstein

Call to prosecute anti-Israel Proms protesters

By Simon Rocker, January 12, 2012

A new pro-Israel lawyers group has written to the Metropolitan Police calling for the prosecution of protesters who disrupted a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in London last September.

Jonathan Turner, chairman of UK Lawyers for Israel, set up last year, urged the Met's Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, to ask the Crown Prosecution Service to act before the March 1 deadline on mounting a prosecution.

Mr Turner argued that charges of aggravated trespass could be brought against some of the demonstrators over the incident during a Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

He wrote: "The disrupters loudly sang, chanted and shouted, effectively ruining the performance for those present and causing the BBC to take the live transmission off the air.

"Eye-witness accounts and video footage confirm that the repeated interruptions resulted in a threatening atmosphere which could easily have led to a serious breakdown of public order."

While a number of witnesses had contacted the police at the time, Mr Turner wrote: "It appears that a decision was then taken not to prosecute, apparently because the Royal Albert Hall management did not specifically ask the police to act.

"We find this difficult to understand. The fact that the Royal Albert Hall has not asked the police to intervene does not mean that no crime has occurred."

The BBC's Complaints System - Designed to Prevent Criticism and Shield the Organisation

2012-01-13T03:19:00.007Z

Don't Fund the BBC's Bias Against Claimants and Palestine
Don't Pay the Licence Fee - Donate it to a Palestinian Charity

An excellent article by Mick Hall of Organised Outrage on how the BBC's Complaints System is deliberately designed to frustrate complainants and prevent complaints succeeding, which is why a negligible proportion ever actually succeed.

Palestine solidarity activists know full well that however biased the BBC is it will always be allowed to faithfully mirror the foreign policy of the government of the day. Hence on Palestine it is 100% Zionist these days and its appalling coverage of Israel's murderous attack on the Gaza Flotilla still resonates, in particular the appalling Death in the Med Panorama programme which got an 'exclusive' with the murderers. They were allowed to testify to Panorama but not even to an Israeli Government Inquiry!! Presumably Mark Thompson and his outfit are considered more reliable.

There is only one answer. Don't get a BBC licence. Let the bastards pay for their own propaganda. I don't pay for one, not that I watch the BBC that much anyway. Some say that the BBC is better than Fox. Maybe it is, but people at least understand that Fox is biased whereas the BBC pretends to be unbiased and impartial.

And if they do make it through to the BBC Trust, then the upper class politicians who dominate proceedings, as Mick says you don't find any workers there, ensure that a complaint is sat on. So you may have seen last year an appalling programme where a US 'welfare expert' came over to Liverpool to spread the message that 'tough love' was needed if capitalism and the bankers were to survive.

No opposition was allowed to this man and the BBC were happy to act as the Tory/New Labour medium in attacking the unemployed and poor.

Tony Greenstein

Pursuing a complaint through the BBC's byzantine complaints system, is like pulling teeth.

Posted: 03 Jan 2012 04:42 AM PST

Dictionary definition of a Debate.

A formal discussion on a particular topic in a public place in which opposing arguments are put forward.

I have spent the last eleven months pursuing a complaint through the BBC's byzantine complaints system, to say it was like pulling teeth would be an understatement. Given the public disquiet about the way the UK press is regulated in house, which was generated by the News International phone hacking scandal. Perhaps it is time the BBC complaints procedure came under the spotlight, as it's undoubtedly no more accountable. Just as senior newspaper executives and editors have the final say at the PCC, so too do senior BBC executives and their place-men in the BBC complaints procedure. If there is clear blue water between how these two complaints procedures operate, I fail to see it.

Even when a BBC apparatchik led me to believe they agreed with the substance of my complaint, I came up against a corridor of mirrors. "Of course we sympathize," they wrote, but you must follow our procedure, as I was shuffled out one door, into the next, marked, next stage of the our tortuous procedure. There is no doubt in my mind this long drawn out bureaucratic process is solely designed to protect the reputation of the BBC and exhaust and demoralize all but the most determined complainants.

Briefly my complaint was critical of BBC TV's Newsnight, for commissioning Professor Lawrence Mead to come to the UK to make a short film advocating workfare, an issue which at the time was about to impact detrimentally on some of the most economically disadvantaged people in the nation. After his video clip was broadcast on Newsnight, (16.2.11) it was followed by a studio debate, if one can call it that, as only Mead and Chris Grayling took part, with Paxman in the chair. As Grayling was the Coalition Minister of State at the Department of Work and Pensions, tasked with the introduction of a form of workfare in the UK; and Mead provided the main theoretical cover for workfare, which aims to limit those who can claim unemployment benefits, it was hardly surprising the debate turned out to be a very one sided affair.

With Mead the main academic advocate for workfare in the USA, and Grayling the coalition minister tasked with introducing it here, one would have expected Newsnight to provide an alternative viewpoint. The more so as workfare in the state of Wisconsin, where it was first trialed, has proven disastrous for some of the most socially deprived people in the State. For example Mead claims in Wisconsin workfare cut the unemployed benefit roll by 90% and in the discussion which followed his video, all three of the participants agreed this was a great success. One expected little from Mead and Grayling, but at the very least Mr Paxman should have asked what happened to these former claimants, did they gain employment, enter further education or a programe of retraining?

Research showed this was not the case, as they disappeared from all public records, presumable having fallen into an anonymous black void of demoralization and hopelessness. I waited in vain for Paxman to say, "Any fool can cut the number of welfare benefits claimants, if you set the bar so high, only a tiny minority become eligible to claim them."

Newsnight's failure to allow an opposing voice into the debate, meant the programe did not live up to BBC's impartial guidelines. Rather than providing a debate in which workfare was stress tested, something which at that time was desperately needed, Newsnight on the night of February 16th, appeared to be more like a Coalition government promo for workfare, a softening up of the British public before the coalition's benefit cuts took affect,

Indeed this lack of an independent impartial voice is not dissimilar to the BBC complaints procedure itself. Indeed it is indicative that some of those who sit on the BBC Trust which oversee the complains procedure, also hold or have held positions on those paragons of virtue and fairness, the Press Complaints Commission and the Police Complaints Commission.

For example the trust members who finally rubber stamped my complaint as rejected, included a consultant and trainer to the Press Complaints Commission, a banker, and director of a private transnational security firm, which has an unsavory reputation, and the founder and senior executive of a major media production company which provides the BBC with programs.

Of course none of the aforementioned would exclude them from this office, indeed in today’s world it might ensure they got the job. But it does question their ability to act in a fair and impartial way, not least because they have a top down mentality and were appointed to the Trust by the governments of the day, the very same people who since 1997 have strained at the leash to introduce workfare.

David Liddiment.

A former senior TV executive who went on to CO-found All3Media, which has a turnover of £241.6m, and for which he acts as Creative Director. According to the company’s web site, over the six years since it's foundation, it has grown both organically and by acquisition to become the largest independent production house in the UK. It produces some of the BBC’s most popular programs including Inspector George Gently, and the Shadow Line. Despite the quality of the aforementioned programes, I do not feel it is being unfair to claim this company has done more to dumdown British TV, than any other content producer bar Simon Cowell’s company Syco Television. Talk about letting the fox into the hen house.

Alison Hastings.

Runs a media consultancy. She is also a consultant to Camelot, and consultant to and member of the infamous Press Complaints Commission.

Richard Ayre.

Former senior BBC executive who worked for the corporation for over 30 years, on leaving the corporation became an active quangoites. How he can justify his membership of the Trust is beyond me. That a former BBC's Controller of Editorial Policy and Deputy Chief Executive of BBC News can sit on the Trust reeks of the same sharp practice which has made the Press Complaints Commission unfit for purpose.

Anthony Fry.

An Investment banker and promoter of hedge funds, need I say more, who also works in business as a non executive director, one of the guys who are tasked with setting the pay of CEO's and senior management, the type who sat on their hands whilst senior executive salaries, including their own, went into the stratosphere and made the UK one of the most unequal societies in the EU. He is also a director of Control Risks, a private security firm which has contracts in most of the worlds trouble spots, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and which hires out mercenaries to offer protection in war zones.

Mehmuda Mian.

When you read her biog. one wonders how she got the job, a competent lawyer who is regarded by power elites as a safe pair of hands and was made a Commissioner to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It is difficult not to conclude she was appointed to be a BBC trustee to make up the ethnic mix.

The fact not a single working class person sits on this panel or the Trust as a whole, is par for the course these days, but to ask a banker, a former senior BBC executive, a member of the press complaints commission which failed so dismally over the phone hacking scandal, and a man who gains a sizeable portion of his wealth from the BBC, the very organization I am complaining about is appalling, if a little surreal, as it sums up perfectly why the system is stacked against an ordinary complainant. To say the least, this is not a system where your complains are judged by a panel of your peers.

If you add in the fact my complaint centers on workfare, a 19th century blow back of a theory which is ultimately designed to help do away with the welfare state; and it beggars belief.

Perhaps readers might get a glimpse of the contempt I have for the BBC’s complaints procedure and the Trust members who over see it, if they read comments made by Richard Hutt, the BBC’s complaints director in a letter to me informing me the Trust had rejected my complaint.

“Turning to your complaint regarding the discussion that followed the report, I note your principle concern was the choice of guests-Professor Mead himself and Chris Grayling, MP, who you identified as a strong advocate for Pro Meads theories.

I would say first the inclusion of a guest who was able to debate the implications of welfare reform and the arguments of Professor Mead would have added depth to the discussion.”

After recognizing this fact, any honest fair minded person would have found in favor of my complaint, but not Mr Hutt and the Trust members who rubber stamped his decision. As I mentioned above assessing independently is not their role as the complaints system is designed to protect the reputation of the BBC.

Incidentally, the Trust members who sat on the panel which finally endorsed the rejection of my complaint, receive an annual payment of between £35,935--£41,070 p.a. plus liberal expenses, for working at most a two day week. So it seems unlikely they will be forced on to workfare, or pressurised to take a causal, low paid job, with the threat of losing their job seekers allowance.

The decision to reject my complaint was agreed by the Trust at their December meeting. It can be read here under the header Newsnight, BBC Two, February15 2011, its on pages 44-47.

Mick Hall

Israel and South African Apartheid – the Good Times

2012-01-09T03:34:00.002Z

South African Politicians Never Hesitated to Compare Apartheid and Israel

Here is a quote from the last white South African Prime Minister, F W de Klerk. For those with long memories, you might recall that when the former South African Prime Minister PW Botha stepped down, he was succeeded by the most right-wing candidate de Klerk, leader of the Trasnvaal Nationalists. Which just goes to prove that the ‘leftists’ in settler-colonial countries aren’t necessarily those to do business with. [thanks to Jewssansfrontieres for this]

What I supported as a younger politician was exactly what the whole world now supports for Israel and Palestine, namely separate nation states will be the solution. In our case we failed. There were three main reasons.

We failed because the whites wanted too much land for themselves. We failed because the majority of blacks said this is not how we want our political rights. And we failed because we became economically totally integrated. We became an economic omelet and you can never again divide an omelet into the white and the yellow of the egg. And we realized in the early eighties we had landed in a place which has become morally unjustified.

It comes from a BBC 4 radio programme. Whereas the BBC was implacably opposed to the Boycott of South Africa at the time, something it conveniently forgets to mention now, it is more than happy to pick up the plaudits today.

There is also an excellent article by Chris McGreal in the Guardian Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria which was published in February 2006.

Many have been the comparisons made by South African politicians, irked at the free ride that Israel was receiving, when Zionism was no different from Apartheid. As the South African press asked:

Is there any difference between the way the people of Israel are trying to maintain themselves amid the non-Jewish peoples and the way the Afrikaner is trying to remain what he is? The people of Israel base themselves upon the Old Testament to explain why they do not wish to mix with other people. The Afrikaner does this too. [Henry Katzew South Africa - A Country Without Friends' Midstream Spring 1962 p. 73, RP Stevens, 'Israel & South Africa' Zionism & Racism, p. l6]

Likewise Dr Verwoerd, in many ways the architect of Apartheid, wrote: “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a 1000 years. In this I agree with them. Israel like South Africa is an apartheid- state.” And the Jerusalem Post made clear in April 1976 on the conclusion of a. pact between Israel and South Africa, after Vorster's visit there:

The Afrikaners were especially enthusiastic... seeing a similarity of interest in two 'white' nations at the head and foot of the African continent waging lonely fights for survival against overwhelming black numbers.
This alliance was not of recent origin. The founder of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote to Cecil Rhodes, the British colonialist after whom Rhodesia was named:

Please give me a statement saying you have examined my programme and found it appropriate. And why do I come to you, Mr Rhodes, you will ask. Because- my programme is. a colonial programme. [T Herzl; Diaries, , Vol III p.105]

Zionists Don't Like It When Anti-Zionists use Holocaust Imagery

2012-01-09T02:20:00.004Z

Zionists in Uproar Over Children Dressed up as Ghetto Inmates

According to the defunct Working Definition on Anti-Semitism that the equally defunct European Union Monitoring Committee had foisted on it, by the American Jewish Congress, comparisons of Israeli policies with Nazism is the ultimate in ‘anti-Semitism’.

In which case let us hear it loud and clear – Israel is the most anti-Semitic country in the world. ‘Nazi’ is used as a ritual term of abuse – against traffic cops, Yitzhak Rabin, Palestinians of course and indeed anyone one dislikes. But if anti-Zionists use any analogy between the Israeli State and Nazi Germany, a far more accurate comparison than one between an oppressed people and racist oppressors, then they are termed ‘anti-Semitic’.

The cause that resulted in the controversy was the practice of the Jewish Orthodox in Jerusalem segregating buses with women at the back. The practice is, of course, disgusting, but Zionists who have repeatedly used such tactics are the last ones to complain when it is used back at them.

Tony Greenstein

Below are 2 articles from Mondoweiss and one from the Daily Beast

Trivializing the anti-Semitism charge

by Philip Weiss on January 4, 2012

Recently we picked up Netanyahu's refusal to write an Op-Ed for the New York Times-- his aide Ron Dermer said the paper's columnists "cavalierly defame our country." Well, the Anti-Defamation League has said that Netanyahu has made the wrong call, the Times is too important to ignore, though Abraham Foxman of the ADL all but accuses the New York Times of anti-Semitism:

Dermer was on to something. There has been an increasingly troubling imbalance in the way that The Times presents stories and opinions on the Middle East conflict. And, contrary to [Nahum] Barnea, who argued that being critical of Mr. Netanyahu's policies does not make one anti-Israel, let alone anti-Semitic, some of The Times' commentary goes beyond mere criticism.
Oh my god. So the New York Times is anti-Semitic? The charge of anti-Semitism is a vital political tool in the American discourse over Israel/Palestine. It stops debate. It was used to slow down the advance of Walt and Mearsheimer's argument.

And note that this same smear has been the theme of the recent rightwing attacks on the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, two thinktanks associated with the Democratic Party. A former AIPAC official has accused writers at the thinktanks of being anti-Semites. He landed on, among other terms, MJ Rosenberg's use of the phrase "Israel firster."

Here is a brilliant response from Jerry Haber, "Hasn't the anti-Semitic charge been trivialized enough?" Read the whole post. This is the start, dealing with the Israel firster business.
Is calling somebody an “Israel Firster” anti-Semitic? Is accusing somebody of “dual loyalty” anti-Semitic? Does it smack of anti-Semitism.to refer to Israeli “apartheid”?

Of course not, unless you want to trivialize anti-Semitism beyond belief, or unless you want to put very reasonable and widely held beliefs beyond the pale of discussion. Heck, I know personally a lot of supporters of Israel who are “Israel first”-ers. I know them; I pray with them; I have them in my classes. In fact, I know a lot of “Israel only”-ers,” I certainly have had students who are US citizens, who would never consider volunteering for the US army, but who have served in the Israel army, even without being an Israeli citizen. (Full disclosure: I have dual loyalty to the US and to Israel because I have dual-citizenship.) I have prayed in modern orthodox synagogues where the prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel has been said, but not the prayer for the welfare of the United States; or where congregants stand for the former and sit for (or mumble) the latter. I don’t agree with this practice, and I criticize such synagogues, but pointing that out doesn’t make you an anti-Semite. And by the way, if you ask people why they are more concerned with Israel than with America, they often answer that Israel is more threatened than America. Or that they love Israel more because they are Jewish. Is it anti-Semitic to point that out?

If you think that using these terms make somebody an anti-Semite or a bigot – a charge that Zionist-leaning organizations like the ADL or the AJC or members of the Zionist rightwing blogosphere (for links, see here) have recently leveled against some bloggers at the Center for American Progress, then perhaps you yourself are an anti-Semite – or at least a bigot.
You see, when somebody says what a Jew can or cannot say, when somebody says that certain discourse is considered to be hateful or insensitive and, as a result, censors or chills that speech – and when that speech is not conceptually connected with anti-Semitism -- then the person who is making that discrimination is anti-Semitic, if a Jew is involved, and bigoted if a non-Jew is involved. Because the same terms said with the same intent cannot be considered anti-Semitic only when a non-Jew says them. I don’t deny that certain terms are more inappropriately said by outsider groups – the N-word comes to mind. But “inappropriately said” is a far cry from anti-Semitic.

Who decides what speech is anti-Semitic. Is there a Pope of anti-Semitism? Who are the experts? According to Commentary’s Alana Goodman, the Anti-Defamation League is “considered by many media outlets to be the final word in all things anti-Semitism” – which, by the way, is the sort of grandiose and unsubstantiated assertion that readers of Commentary may be used to, but I certainly am not. Who appointed the ADL? And do they consider Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, and a host of Israeli commentators anti-Semitic, when they refer to Israeli apartheid? Perhaps Israeli politicians are allowed to be bigoted? And even if the term is inaccurate, what does that have to do with anti-Semitism?

Wonderful. I keep meaning to do a post on Hannah Arendt's and Theodor Herzl's acknowledgment of the problem of dual loyalty, or accusations thereof. I'll get to that in a day or so.

In Jerusalem, the Holocaust Is Trivialized

Jan 4, 2012

Even for the ultra-Orthodox, the Holocaust and Nazism are tossed blithely into political discourse. Is nothing sacred?

An Israeli protest over the weekend by ultra-Orthodox Jews who dressed their children to look like inmates at a Nazi concentration camp highlights the sometimes peculiar role the Holocaust plays there in political discourse and even in everyday exchanges.

The spectacle at a Jerusalem square Saturday night, staged by the most extreme of the ultra-Orthodox community’s myriad factions, featured mostly adults but also several dozen kids in striped uniforms and yellow stars, evoking the Holocaust’s most iconic images. The demonstrators were protesting an effort by secular Israelis to roll back gender segregation on some bus lines and in certain neighborhoods—a dispute that has surged in recent weeks.

Politicians from across the spectrum voiced outrage, as did Jewish groups in Israel and abroad, describing the display as an ugly trivialization of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazis and their sympathizers.

But while it amounted to the most graphic insinuation in recent memory that Israelis are somehow perpetrating Nazi-like crimes against fellow Israelis, it was hardly the first time the Holocaust has been used cynically here in a political context.

In fact, even as Israel zealously guards the memory of the genocide, many Israelis invoke it frivolously in a manner that can seem shocking to outsiders and might even be illegal in some countries (the EU has a provision against trivializing the Holocaust, as do several European countries individually).

“People in Israel misuse the Holocaust in politics and other areas all the time,” says Yehuda Bauer, a Holocaust historian and the academic adviser to Yad Vashem, Israel’s primary Holocaust memorial and museum. “It’s used mainly by the right wing but also by the left and center” to vilify political adversaries.

In its more benign form, Israelis might talk about the 1967 line that divides Israel and the West Bank as “the Auschwitz border,” or equate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Adolf Hitler. Bauer recalls that during Israel’s Lebanon war in 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin famously likened the blockade against PLO leader Yasir Arafat in Beirut to the siege on Hitler’s bunker near the end of World War II.

It’s not uncommon to hear Israelis refer to other Israelis as Nazis. Jewish settlers regularly use the term against Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. Israeli traffic cops occasionally complain they’re called Nazis by the motorists they pull over.

“The comparisons tend to dilute the real significance of the Holocaust,” he says.

But it’s not uncommon to hear Israelis refer to other Israelis as Nazis as well. Jewish settlers regularly use the term against Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, as when troops are sent to dismantle unauthorized outposts. The late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a well-known left-wing intellectual, once described settlers as “Judeo-Nazis.” Israeli traffic cops occasionally complain they’re called Nazis by the motorists they pull over.

Abraham Foxman, who directs the Anti-Defamation League, an American organization that fights anti-Semitism and other bigotry, says the inappropriate Holocaust references are the result of ignorance and the passage of time. He describes them as part of a worldwide phenomenon.

“Trivialization of the Holocaust is booming. Just look at our political campaign here,” he says. In one example, he cites Florida Congressman Allen West’s remark last month about how Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would be “very proud” of Democrats for their misinformation campaign against Republicans.

On the other side of the globe, Foxman says, India had since November been airing a daily soap opera named Hitler Didi about a young woman whose obligations at home and work have turned her into a humorless disciplinarian. When the ADL and other groups complained, the network changed the show’s name to General Didi.

But it’s in Israel where the references seem most bewildering. The country has the largest population of Holocaust survivors in the world—some 200,000. Israel marks the genocide every year with a haunting siren that wails across the country. Yad Vashem is one of the first places foreign dignitaries are taken during official visits.

Nachman Shai, a member of Israel’s Parliament from the centrist Kadima party, said he would author a bill making trivialization of the Holocaust illegal in response to the ultra-Orthodox protest, which went on for several hours and received extensive coverage in the Israeli press. “I feel there’s a vacuum [in the legislation], and we have to fill it right away.”

Shai said the protesters displayed the most evocative symbols—including having children raise their hands to mimic an iconic photo of a Jewish boy at the Warsaw ghetto—knowing they would provoke Israelis. He said ultra-Orthodox rabbis must have authorized the stunt. “This community doesn’t do anything without the permission of the rabbis.”

Bauer, the academic adviser to Yad Vashem, says that for Jews and Israelis, misusing the Holocaust has a psychology of its own. “Israel is a traumatized society that is thrown back onto the trauma all the time,” he tells The Daily Beast. “When a society is traumatized like that, any opponent or perceived enemy is immediately equalized with the worst enemy Israel ever had.”

Trivializing the Holocaust charge

by Nima Shirazi on January 5, 2012

Shortly after reading the "Trivializing the anti-Semitism charge" post on Mondoweiss today, I came across this new Daily Beast article about the Israeli habit of trivializing the Holocaust. The article stems from the recent ultra-Orthodox rallies in Jerusalem which mimicked and exploited iconic Holocaust imagery to protest "an effort by secular Israelis to roll back gender segregation on some bus lines and in certain neighborhoods—a dispute that has surged in recent weeks."

The article's author, Dan Ephron, writes that "even as Israel zealously guards the memory of the genocide, many Israelis invoke it frivolously in a manner that can seem shocking to outsiders and might even be illegal in some countries (the EU has a provision against trivializing the Holocaust, as do several European countries individually)."

The litany of "misuses" of Holocaust analogies and references is familiar:

In its more benign form, Israelis might talk about the 1967 line that divides Israel and the West Bank as “the Auschwitz border,” or equate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Adolf Hitler. Bauer recalls that during Israel’s Lebanon war in 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin famously likened the blockade against PLO leader Yasir Arafat in Beirut to the siege on Hitler’s bunker near the end of World War II.

That Ephron uses the word "benign" to describe these ridiculous comparisons is either proof of his own trivialization of the very thing he is seeking to sanctify or, more likely, evidence that he just doesn't know the definition of the word "benign" (kindly, generous, gentle, benevolent). Surely, a benign reading of Ephron's word choice would be to assume he meant "banal" instead (i.e. commonplace, mundane, trite, bromidic, clichéd).

He continues,
...it’s not uncommon to hear Israelis refer to other Israelis as Nazis as well. Jewish settlers regularly use the term against Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, as when troops are sent to dismantle unauthorized outposts. The late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a well-known left-wing intellectual, once described settlers as “Judeo-Nazis.” Israeli traffic cops occasionally complain they’re called Nazis by the motorists they pull over.

Holocaust historian and Yad Vashem academic adviser Yehuda Bauer explains, "People in Israel misuse the Holocaust in politics and other areas all the time," lamenting, "The comparisons tend to dilute the real significance of the Holocaust."

Still, the comparisons abound. Just today, a new headline at Ha'aretz reveals that Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman has "a very hostile attitude toward the media, reportedly calling Haaretz 'Der Sturmer' - the Nazis' propaganda paper."

After quoting the ever-inane Abe Foxman and describing a new effort in the Knesset to enact anti-trivialization legislation, Ephron ends with another quote from Bauer:

"Israel is a traumatized society that is thrown back onto the trauma all the time," he tells The Daily Beast. "When a society is traumatized like that, any opponent or perceived enemy is immediately equalized with the worst enemy Israel ever had."

Read that again. There are two important aspects of Bauer's observation.

First is the unassailable truth that the idea of perpetual and singular victimhood pervades Jewish Israeli society (and perhaps the American and European Jewish communities at large).
Peter Beinart, in his much-discussed 2010 New York Review of Books article, noted "In the world of AIPAC, the Holocaust analogies never stop, and their message is always the same: Jews are licensed by their victimhood to worry only about themselves."

Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu used a nearly identical formulation is his speech to an obsequious U.S. Congress. "As for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously," he bellowed. "We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say never again, we mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself."

As this writer has pointed out before, Netanyahu's turn of phrase is ironic considering the title of former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg's 2008 book, "The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes," in which Burg exposes the purpose of playing the victim. "Victimhood sets you free," he writes.

Furthermore, over thirty years ago, in 1980, Israeli journalist Boaz Evron put it another way: "If we assume the world hates us and persecutes us, we feel exempted from the need to be accountable for our actions towards it."

Though Bauer, as quoted in Ephron's article, suggests that Israel is "thrown back onto trauma all the time," Israeli professor and historian Avi Shlaim addressed that particular formulation almost exactly three years ago as Israeli bombs, bullets, and white phosphorous tore Gaza and hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children to shreds. He wrote in The Guardian:

"As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

Seven months before that, in May 2008, Uri Avnery observed that
the Palestinians are suffering from several cruel strokes of fate: The people that oppress them claim for themselves the crown of ultimate victimhood. The whole world sympathizes with the Israelis because the Jews were the victims of the most horrific crime of the Western world. That creates a strange situation: the oppressor is more popular than the victim. Anyone who supports the Palestinians is automatically suspected of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

The second interesting aspect of Bauer's concluding quote is that the Nazis, who were in power from 1933 to 1945, are described as "the worst enemy Israel ever had." Israel was founded in 1948. Bauer is clearly - though perhaps unconsciously - equating "Israel" with "Jews" and utilizes his own Holocaust reference to reconstruct history and erase Palestinian existence altogether.

In so doing, Bauer conforms his worldview to the epitome of Netanyahu's Zionist chauvinism: Israel is a "Jewish State" that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust, rather than one built - violently, colonially, and deliberately - atop the ruins of Palestine.

The Religious Difference Between Being Jewish & Zionist

2012-01-09T01:36:00.006Z

Zionism Was the Creation of Non-Jewish Imperialists not Jews

I am posting this article from Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist Hasidic religious group of Jews, not because I agree with it, but because it is useful for people to rebut the arguments that Zionism and Judaism are intertwined. As an atheist of course there cannot be a god to give land to anyone, not withstanding the idea that the alleged fact that one’s ancestors lived somewhere over 2,000 years ago gives you the right to dispossess those who live there now.

When Zionism first arose as a political movement, in the 19th Century, it sprang from non-Jewish imperialists like Palmerston, Napoleon III and Lord Shaftesbury. Jews considered it a species of anti-Semitism and when Herzl proposed that the First Zionist Congress of 1897 be held in Munich, the Jews there protested and it had to be held in Basel, Switzerland.

Orthodox and Reform Judaism both united to condemn a movement that only anti-Semites supported. This history has, of course been lost and rewritten but it is always timely to remind people of the actual history of Zionism.

Tony Greenstein

The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism

G. Neuburger

Where the Torah tells about the creation of the first human being, the most prominent Jewish commentator, Rashi, explains that the earth from which Adam was formed was not taken from one spot but from various parts of the globe. Thus human dignity does not depend on the place of one's birth nor is it limited to one region.

The greatness or worth of a person is not measured by his or her outward appearance. Jews believe that Adam was created in G-d's image and that he is the common ancestor of all mankind. At this stage in human history, there is no room for privileged people who can do with others as they please. Human life is sacred and human rights are not to be denied by those who would subvert them for "national security" or for any other reason. No one knows this better than the Jews, who have been second-class citizens so often and for so long. Some Zionists, however, may differ. This is understandable because Judaism and Zionism are by no means the same. Indeed they are incompatible and irreconcilable: If one is a good Jew, one cannot be a Zionist; if one is a Zionist, one cannot be a good Jew.

For over 60 years I have fought Zionism, as did my father before me, and I am therefore quite familiar with it. For those who have been in this fight for only the last ten or twenty years, what I have to say may be surprising or even shocking. Nevertheless these matters must be stated clearly and openly, because unless the disease of Zionism is diagnosed accurately, it cannot be cured. Too long have those opposed to Zionism engaged in daydreaming and wishful thinking. In order to recognize Zionism for what it is, one has to know about Judaism, about Zionism -- the opposite and negation of Judaism, and about Jewish history. In the time allotted to me, I am not going to talk about the actions of the Zionists; they will be adequately dealt with by others. As a Jew, I plan to discuss Zionism, which is rebellion against G-d and treason to the Jewish people.

To begin with, a few definitions: Who is a Jew? A Jew is anyone who has a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism in conformity with Halacha, Jewish religious law. This definition alone excludes racism. Judaism does not seek converts, but those who do convert are accepted on a basis of equality. Let us see how far this goes. Some of the most eminent and respected rabbis were converts to Judaism. Jewish parents throughout the world bless their children every Sabbath and holiday eve, and they have done it in the same way for millennia. If the children are girls, the blessing is, "May G-d let you be like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah." Not one of these matriarchs was born a Jewess; they were all converts to Judaism. If the children are boys, the blessing is, "May G-d let you be like Ephraim and Menashe." The mother of these two was an Egyptian woman who became Jewish and had married Joseph. Moses himself, the greatest Jew who ever lived, married a Midianite woman who became Jewish. Finally, the Tenach, the holy writings of the Jew, contains the book of Ruth. This woman was not only not Jewish by birth, but she came from the Moabites, traditional enemies of the Jewish people. This book describes Ruth's conversion to Judaism and is read annually on the holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah, the "Law," i.e. the Pentateuch. At its very end, the book of Ruth traces the ancestry of King David, the greatest king the Jews ever had, to Ruth, his great-grandmother.

Apart from the Zionists, the only ones who consistently considered the Jews a race were the Nazis. And they only served to prove the stupidity and irrationality of racism. There was no way to prove racially whether a Mrs. Muller or a Mr. Meyer were Jews or Aryans (the Nazi term for non-Jewish Germans. The only way to decide whether a person was Jewish was to trace the religious affiliation of the parents or grandparents. So much for the this racial nonsense.

Racial pride has been the downfall of those Jews in the past who were blinded by their own narrow-minded chauvinism. This brings us to a second definition. Is there a Jewish people? If so, what is its mission? Let us make this completely clear: The Jewish nation was not born or reconstituted a generation ago by some Zionist politicians. The Jewish nation was born on Mount Sinai when the Jews by their response, "let us do and let us hear," adopted the Torah given to them by G-d for all future generations. `This day you become a people," though valid still today, was spoken thousands of years ago.

According to Jewish tradition, there are seven Noachide laws which apply to all human beings. Then there are the Ten Commandments which form basic standard of morality and conduct for adherents of all monotheistic religions. In addition to these, there are 613 laws obligatory for Jews, and every Jew has to observe those which are applicable to him or her according to Halacha. It is the carrying out of these mitzvoth, "commandments," which constitutes the essence of being Jewish, and therefore of the Jewish people and their covenant with G-d.
In what way are the Jews a "chosen people"? Every Jewish man anywhere and at any time when called to the reading of the Torah says, "Who has chosen us from all the peoples and gave us His Torah." This is the way in which the Jews are chosen. The Jewish people are chosen not for domination over others, not for conquest or warfare, but to serve G-d and thus to serve mankind. "And the hands are the hands of Esau," has been traditionally interpreted to mean that while "the voice is Jacob's," the hands- - symbolizing violence - are Esau's. Thus physical violence is not a tradition or a value of the Jews. The task for which the Jewish people were chosen is not to set an example of military superiority or technical achievements, but to seek perfection in moral behavior and spiritual purity. Of all the crimes of political Zionism, the worst and most basic, and which explains all its other misdeeds, is that from its beginning Zionism has sought to separate the Jewish people from their G-d, to render the divine covenant null and void, and to substitute a "modern" statehood and fraudulent sovereignty for the lofty ideals of the Jewish people.

One means of misleading many Jews and all too many non-Jews is the Zionist misuse of names and symbols sacred in Judaism. They use the holy name Israel for their Zionist state. They have named their land acquisition fund with a term that traditionally implies the reward for piety, good deeds, and charitable work. They have adopted as a state symbol the menorah (candlebrum). What hypocrisy, what perversion it is to have the Israeli army fight under an emblem, the meaning of which is explained in the Tenach (on the occasion of a previous return to the Holy Land) as, "not with armed force and not with power, but in My spirit says the Lord of Hosts."

The infamous founder of political Zionism, may his name be cursed, who only discovered his own Jewishness because of anti-Semitism displayed at the Dreyfus trial in France, proposed various solutions to what he called the "Jewish problem." At one point he proposed to resettle the Jews in Uganda. At another he proposed to convert them to Catholicism. He finally hit on the idea of a Judenstaat, an exclusive Jewish state. Thus from its very beginning Zionism was a result of Anti-Semitism and indeed is completely compatible with it, because Zionists and anti-Semites had (and have) a common goal: To bring all Jews from their places of domicile to the Zionist state, thus uprooting Jewish communities that had existed for hundreds and even thousands of years. Loyalty to the Zionist state was substituted for loyalty to G-d, and the state was made into the modern "golden calf". Belief in the Torah and fulfillment of religious obligations in Zionist eyes became a private matter and not a duty for every Jew or for the Jewish people. The Zionists made divine law subject to party or parliamentary votes, and they set their own standards of conduct and ethics.

Neither the founder of political Zionism nor any of the prime ministers of the Zionist state believed in the divine origin of the Torah nor even in the existence of G-d. All prime ministers were members of a party that opposed religion in principle and that considered the Bible a document of ancient folklore, devoid of any religious meaning. And yet these same Zionists base their claim to the Holy Land on this same Bible, the divine origin of which they deny. At the same time they conveniently forget the Jewish holiday prayer "and for our sins have we been exiled from our land," and ignore the fact that the present exile of the Jewish people is divinely decreed and that the Jewish people are neither commanded nor permitted to conquer or rule the Holy Land before the coming of the Messiah. The Jewish people do, of course, recognize special spiritual ties to that land they call it Eretz Yisrael. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, and night they mention it and Zion and Jerusalem in their prayers, and indeed a Jew does not sit down to a meal without doing likewise. To the Jew, the very soil of the Holy Land is different from that of any other spot on this globe, and wherever he is he turns his face toward Jerusalem during prayers. To live in the Holy Land or even to be buried there was always considered to be of high merit.

This love of the land and the Jewish longing for a return to it and for the coming of the Messiah have been exploited innumerable times during the past 2,000 years. Zionism has had many precursors and each has been a curse for the Jews. Individuals who proclaimed themselves the Messiah and messianic movements have sprung up from time to time, from the Roman era through the Middle Ages and down to the modern Zionists. Many of these pseudo-Messiahs posed as rabbis or as national leaders, though some of them eventually professed other faiths; many temporarily - some for longer periods - succeeded in misleading Jews, rabbis, and entire Jewish communities. All were in due course exposed and recognized as frauds, and those who had set their hope on them found only disappointment and all too often disaster.

In the early stages of the development of modern Zionism, the Mizrachi was founded, an organization of so-called religious Zionists who tried to combine their faith with political Zionism. This led to constant conflict between the dictates of divine law and the demands of Jewish nationalism. Most of the time, the Mizrachi was outvoted at Zionist congresses and served only to give the Zionist movement a false religious aura. Whenever expediency called for it, these "religious" Zionist fellow-travelers have been used by the Zionist government to underpin national claims with "religious" authority. The National Religious Party in the Zionist state has been well rewarded for giving its stamp of approval to nationalistic measures and enactments, whether these rewards were of financial nature or in the form of cabinet or other government posts. The chauvinism of these religious Zionists frequently exceeded that of other Zionists, and it was always couched in religious terms - a prime example of the abuse of religion. The fraudulence of these "religious" Zionists was demonstrated during the past year when it was revealed that two of their world leaders had committed million-dollar thefts.

A Jewish world organization was founded in 1912 on the German-Polish border with the specific purpose of fighting Zionism. This organization, Agudath Israel, "Union of Israel," was to represent the true Jewish people in the world and to unmask the unwarranted and unjust claims of the Zionists. Rabbis everywhere joined Agudath Israel, as did masses of observant Jews. Anti-Zionist congresses were convened in Vienna and in Marienbad. In countries such as Poland, Agudists were members of parliament. Under Agudah leadership more than 50 years ago, Jews in the Holy Land opposed to Zionism obtained permission from Britain, the mandatory power in Palestine, to declare in writing that they did not wish to be represented by the Zionists or any of their groups, particularly not by the Zionist quasi-governmental organizations such as the Va'ad Leumi, "National Council."

Shortly thereafter, Jacob de Haan, a former distinguished Dutch diplomat who was then leader of Agudath Israel in Palestine, initiated talks with Arab leaders with a view toward the eventual establishments of a state there in which Jews and Arabs would have equal rights. In this way he hoped to forestall the creation of a Zionist state. Despite threats to his life, de Haan, fully aware of the ultimate dangers of a Zionist state, continued his talks and negotiations. On the eve of his departure in 1924 for Britain to meet with authorities there, he was assassinated by the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary force, in the center of Jerusalem as he came from evening prayers. More than a half a century ago, this devout and visionary Jew gave his life in a fight that he considered paramount, at a time when the world at large was still blind and deaf to the difficulties and problems that a future Zionist state would entail.

As a result of such terrorism and increasing Zionist pressure, Agudath Israel gradually began to weaken and to compromise. During the Nazi period, it entered indo deals and arrangements with the Zionists, despite the fact that its fundamental aim had been to combat Zionism. After the Zionist state was established, Agudath Israel broke off with its past, participated in the Zionist government on the cabinet level and elected Agudists to the Zionist parliament. Still professing a nominal anti-Zionism, Agudath Israel established a network of "independent" schools in the Holy Land, but today the overwhelming part of the budget of these schools comes from the Zionist government.

In view of these developments, those Jews who wanted to continue the fight against Zionism without any compromise left Agudath Israel and constituted themselves as the Neturei Karta, an Aramaic phrase meaning "Guardians of the City," i.e. the city of Jerusalem. The Neturei Karta in turn became a worldwide movement, known in some places as "Friends of Jerusalem."

The greatest leader of the Neturei Karta was Rabbi Amram Blau, an inspired and dedicated leader whose compassion equaled his courage. He could not keep silent in the face of injustice, immorality, or hypocrisy. He was beloved by Jews and respected by Christians and Muslims. Born in Jerusalem, he never left the Holy Land during his entire life. In his writings he stressed many times that Jews and Arabs had lived in harmony until the advent of political Zionism. Rabbi Blau was imprisoned in Jerusalem, not by the Ottoman authorities, not by the British, and not by the Arabs, but by the Zionists. What was his crime? He defended with vigor and honesty, without regard for his own safety, the holy character of Jerusalem against the "innovations" and encroachments of the Zionists. He fought for the sanctity of the Sabbath and actively opposed the inroads of indecency and immorality made under the Zionist regime. Unceasingly he denounced the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah as an acct of infamy and blasphemy. Under his leadership, the Neturei Karta declared year after year that they did not recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist state or the validity of its laws.

During the first period of fighting between the Zionist state and the Arabs, the rabbis of the Neturei Karta went toward the combat lines, carrying a white flag, and stated that they wanted no part in this war and that they were absolutely opposed to the creation of a Zionist state. In his last proclamation, Rabbi Blau deplored the actions of the Zionists against the Muslim and Christian Palestinians and the grievous harm done by the Zionists to the Jewish people in endeavoring to change them from "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" to a modern state, devoid of spiritual foundation, based on chauvinism, built on conquest, and relying on military prowess. "The number of your cities constitute your gods," the prophet Jeremiah had thundered to the chauvinist and idolatrous Jewish government of this day. Like it, the Zionists are now establishing a new status quo and expanding their position by founding new settlements in he territories occupied since 1967.

Rabbi Blau in his last statement severely condemned the UN for recognizing and accepting as a member the Zionist state, thus giving the Zionists unprecedented prestige and power. It is high time that the anti-Zionist nations listen to him, heed his plea, and undo this great wrong and correct this fatal error. It is well known that no action was taken concerning the expulsion of the Zionist state because of the fear that financial support for the UN would be withdrawn. Let those states, opposed to Zionism, who have become affluent during the past generation, show that they mean what they say by offering to replace any financial loss the UN may suffer as a consequence, and let the member states vote their conscience without fear and regardless of any intimidation.

There has been times before in Jewish history, as related in the Bible, when the masses were misled and only a minority of Jews clung to the true mission of the Jewish people. One of the first such of the occasions was the worship of the golden calf; today we unfortunately see a repetition of this, with the Zionist state now being the object of worship. Until the appearance and growing influence of political Zionism, Jewish leaders were chosen on the basis of their piety, decency, learning, and their love of justice and mercy. Today only too often so-called Jewish leaders, completely unqualified under Jewish law and traditional concepts, make pronouncements and decisions in the name and on behalf of the Jewish people. This is particularly true in the USA where there is the largest Jewish community in our time. I can never forget the remark of a woman in Oklahoma: "Isn't today's Judaism wonderful! All you have to do is give money."

Even at his death Rabbi Blau refuted the Zionists who had often claimed that the Neturei Karta was nothing but an insignificant sect of a few hundred souls. Yet when Rabbi Blau died in Jerusalem on a Friday morning two years ago, a few hours later no fewer than 22,000 men attended his funeral.

At all times in the past, the misleaders of the Jews have sooner or later fallen by the wayside, and only those who upheld the validity of the Torah and the Talmud (the written and oral law) and of Halachah, and who resisted the demagogues, prevailed. The Neturei Karta follow in this tradition. They continue as a living rebuke to Zionism and speak in our time for the true Jewish people, those who have not been misled by Zionism.

During the Roman conquest of the Holy Land, there were Jews who on the basis of nationalism and racial pride were sure that they could not lose a war. They, like the Zionists of our day, were opposed to any compromise or settlement; there were determined to fight to the end. At that time, however almost 2,000 years ago, the fore most rabbi, Rabbi Yochanan ben Sakkai, chose a different way. The military adventurers prevented him from leaving beleaguered Jerusalem to negotiate with the Romans, so the rabbi had himself carried out in a coffin by his disciples to the Roman headquarters. He said to the Romans that the Jews need neither an army nor weapons and asked for permission to establish a yeshiva, a Jewish religious school, at Yavneh. It was this religious school, and not the militarists or generals of the time, that helped to perpetuate Judaism and the identity of the Jewish people.

It must be stated explicitly that while not all Jews are Zionists, not all Zionists are Jews. The motives of some of these non-Jewish Zionists, e.g. Lord Balfour and General Smuts, are at least open to question. From the beginning of the Zionist movement, some of the most articulate and fervent Zionists have been Christian clergymen, especially "fundamentalists," who hail Zionism as an important "religious" movement and welcome it as a fulfillment of prophecy. They also, and significantly, serve the cause of Zionism.

One of the basic aims of Zionism is aliyah, the immigration to the Zionist state of Jews from all countries. Nevertheless, during the past few years hundreds of thousands of Israelis have outgathered themselves from the Zionist paradise, and American Jews have "voted with their feet" and have chosen not to be ingathered. These Jews recognize that the Zionist state is in fact nothing but a giant ghetto.

Instead of being able to render assistance to Jewish communities in other countries, American Jews have been mobilized to concentrate on helping the Zionist state, making the USA the real and major source of Zionist power and influence. The Zionists, true to the nature of their movement, rely on technical superiority and on a forbidding military deterrent - provided largely by the USA - for their security.

Nothing could be farther from the true ideals of the Jewish people. The Jewish people were chosen in the first place "for you are the leas of all nations." As the Psalm says, "they rely on vehicles and horsepower, but we invoke the name of the Eternal, our G-d."

One most vital point deserves mention. A former president of the World Zionist Organization has stated explicitly that a Zionist owes unqualified loyalty to the Zionist state and that, in the case of a conflict, the first loyalty of a Zionist must be to the Zionist state. According to Jewish law, however, a Jew owes allegiance and loyalty to the country of which he is a citizen, and, of course, no faithful Jews owes any loyalty or allegiance to the Zionist state which has been condemned by the foremost rabbis of our age.

It is not my purpose to detail how Zionism should be dealt with. Let me state, however, that isolated or spontaneous acts against individuals or the mere adoption of resolutions in the UN or elsewhere are not effective means of bringing an end to Zionism. Let me state also that the battle against Zionism must be waged first, not on the shores of the Mediterranean, but in Zionism's most powerful bastion -- the USA>

As an American citizen, I deplore that our government and our politicians have adopted an attitude that is in complete contradiction to the advice of the father of our country George Washington. Instead of shying away from foreign entanglements and permanent alliances with foreign powers, the establishment in Washington has embraced Zionism so wholeheartedly that in the eyes any criticism of the Zionist state and any opposition to political Zionism in the UN by any nation has become a punishable offense. And the docile American media do not dare to speak out against such an absurdity.

Unfortunately, thus far, each year sees still further gains in influence by American Zionists. This fact has made possible events and developments that were unthinkable even ten years ago. It takes a lot of courage to be opposed to Zionism in the USA today. It also took a lot of courage during the Second World War to be anti-Fascist in Italy or anti-Nazi in Germany. In the long run Zionism is nothing but a passing aberration in the long history of the Jewish people and of the world.

Let us take faith and hope in the certainty that eventually prejudice, hatred, and injustice will disappear, and that the prophecy will come true that all nations of the world will participate in the pilgrimage to Jerusalem "for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations."

Suspension of 4 London Philharmonic Players to be Challenged Legally

2012-01-09T01:09:00.004Z

Those Who Support the 'Freedom' of The IPO Become Mute When It Came to the Suspension of 4 Musicians for Exercising Freedom of Speech

Some of you will remember the disruption that was caused by Palestine solidarity activists to the performance of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra on September 1st last. The blog of the ultra-reactionary Norman Geras reports, though it is subsequently denied, that the IPO is unlikely to visit these shores again so upset were they by people protesting against the atrocities that many of them individually take part in as willing soldiers in the IOF.

Whilst this is an important victory for the Boycott campaign we should not forget the 4 London Philharmonic Orchestra players who were suspended for 9 months (later reduced to 6) for the temerity of criticising the invitation to the IPO. On this blatant attack on artists freedom of speech we hear nothing from the mealy mouthed ‘cultural’ defenders of ‘freedom to oppress’. The deprivation of their livelihood for 6 months for expressing their views in a letter to the Guardian has gone almost unremarked. Meanwhile the report below suggests that there is going to be a legal challenge in an Employment Tribunal against the suspensions.

Tony Greenstein

LPO4 case goes to Employment Tribunal

The first legal challenge to the suspension of four players by the London Philharmonic has apparently been instigated by violinist Sarah Streatfeild.

Streatfeild, along with three of her colleagues, Tom Eisner, Nancy Elan and Sue Sutherley, were all signatories to a published letter protesting the invitation of the Israel Philharmonic to the 2011 Proms. All four players named the LPO as their employer in the letter. The orchestra suspended the players for nine months, initially on the spurious grounds that for the LPO 'music and politics do not mix.' But chief executive Timothy Walker later admitted that the decision had been made as a direct result of pressure from individual donors, whose continuing favour presumably over-ruled any thoughts of loyalty to the orchestra's players at board level.
Sensing hostility to the decision from a significant proportion of its audience, the orchestra reduced the suspensions from nine months to six. Then, with gagging orders placed on the four players, and the orchestra's management hoping the incident would be forgotten, everything went quiet.

But an email I received this week suggests that at least one of the players plans to challenge the suspension in court. The message was from an anonymous source who claims to have connections with the legal world. He or she had heard that Sarah Streatfeild has hired the Bindmans law firm to represent her in an employment tribunal against the orchestra. The email also suggested that demands would include a full public apology and compensation for loss of earnings.

No doubt the orchestra took legal advice at the time of the suspensions, and Timothy Walker appeared confident in the legality of the move. Nevertheless, they will find Geoffrey Bindman a formidable opponent. He and his firm have an impressive track record, with clients ranging from Amnesty International to Private Eye. Geoffrey Bindman has already expressed his personal support for the players. A letter in their defence appeared in the Telegraph on 22 September 2011, and he was among its 117 signatories.

Fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ Israeli Student style

2012-01-09T00:27:00.004Z

Israeli Internet Activists Paid 7,600 Shekels for Become Israeli Propagandists

Below is an interesting little article from Adam Keller of Gush Shalom, a non-Zionist Israeli group whose most prominent figure is Uri Avnery. It describes how Israel’s National Union of Students has abandoned social protest in Israel (not that it ever had much involvement except token support for the summer protests) in favour of tackling ‘anti-Semitism’ on the Internet.

And what is meant by anti-Semitism? As Adam says, it used to be quite simple to tell who was an anti-Semite. They called you a ‘dirty Jew’ they hit you with sticks or attacked you with knives or guns, they advocated discrimination. Problem is that today’s anti-Semites protest about the Jewish National Fund evicting Bedouin farmers in the Negev to make way for Jewish settlement. They call for a boycott by Israeli artists of the West Bank settlements and some of these anti-Semites object to their children taking history lessons from the settlers of Hebron.

You can guage the quality of Israel's government, and this has relevance for the discussion on this blog on false accusations of 'anti-Semitism' that Prof. Yaakov Neeman, Israel's Minister of Justice (surely some mistake?) has taken to calling the liberal Zionist newspaper Ha'aretz Der Sturmer, after the vile anti-Semitic porn mag edited by Julius Streicher, who was hanged at Nuremburg in 1946.

But as Adam Keller points out, there are fake academics and the Reut Institute more than prepared to re-educate those who think anti-Semitism is about attacking Jews as Jews. It’s all about criticicism of Israel’s colonial policies. But don’t worry. If you agree to defend the indefensible for a year you will receive 7,600 Shekels (approximately £1274.39). Not bad pay for fighting anti-Semitism!

About Antisemites and Kindergartens

Several months ago, the social protest in Israel was at its peak. The crowds took to the streets and called for Social Justice. The Israeli National Union of Students was prominent among the protest leadership – the union as such, and most especially its chair Itzik Shmueli.

A prominent issue at the time was the "Baby Carriages Protest" of mothers demanding free kindergartens. And lo and behold, at this very moment the Prime Minister is proposing that the cabinet implements free kindergartens to all! A happy end – or is it? Not precisely. A small question remains - exactly where will the money come from?

The social protesters had called for a cut in the defense budget, and noted that providing social security to Israel's citizens is as every bit as important as providing external security. Three months ago the Prime Minister went on record with the opinion that out of the annual tens of billions allocated to the military, three billion can be cut without compromising Israel's security. But that was three months ago, an eternity in this country's politics. Since then, participation in demonstrations on the streets went down. What went up were the dire warnings by the generals - about the dangers and challenges posed by the upheavals in the Middle East' about the coming wars in Gaza and Iran etc. In short, the Prime Minister announcing a defense budget cut is now definitely out of the question.

There was also a proposal to impose a special tax on the richest of the rich in our country. Not much, just two percent - it certainly would not have led them to bankruptcy. But at the last minute before it was to be voted on in the Knesset, the tax on the rich just vanished, evaporated into thin air. Just what happened? Perhaps, once upon a time, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance will deign to give an explanation. Meanwhile, the tycoons get to keep their money and keep defaulting on payments of their debts.

So, where will kindergartens be funded from? No problem, a flat budget cut will be implemented in all government funding, other social activities will be curtailed and reduced and the money transferred to the kindergartens. "That's not at all what we wanted and demanded" cry out the social protest leaders. "We did not want the blanket pulled from one side to the other, one social budget cut for the sake of another. We demanded a significant increase in all the social budgets!"

But this time, the voice of the National Union of Students is missing among the renewed social protesters. At the moment, they have more important and urgent issues to deal, world-spanning issues. In short, the union is engaged in mobilizing the students of Israel to fight antisemitism. Yes, a struggle against antisemitism. What a wonderful cause. And it turns out that nowadays, it is no longer needed to take any risks in order to fight antisemitism. You need not even leave your home. In this day and age, it is possible to fight antisemitism from the comfort and convenience of the student's own home. Just in front of your word-processor with a cup of steaming tea at your side and get on with the job, fight and fight and fight, detect and locate and map out the nasty anti-Semitic sites of which the Internet is full and pull the ground away from under them.

"This is our chance, Israeli students! Our chance to provide correct and balanced information, help in the fight against the de-legitimization of Israel and against anti-Jewish hatred in the world!" exhorted the National Union of Students in the manifesto addressed to its three hundred thousand members. And best of all, you don't have to do it for free. Each student committed to engage in the fateful struggle against antisemitism for a at least five hours per week over the coming year will in the end be rewarded and remunerated to the tune of 7600 Israeli Shekels.

The only remaining question is this: just who are the antisemites, and how can we recognize them? Over long periods in history, there had been no great difficulty in this regard. Antisemites used to be quite obliging and even the most simple of persons could easily recognize them on sight. But since then, things have changed considerably, and nowadays you often need to be an expert with years of exacting studies behind you in order to locate and identify the antisemites.

Indeed, both here in Israel and all over the world, experts of this kind are hard at work, tirelessly increasing and extending the scope of antisemitism and often making brilliant careers in the process. They have searched out and located antisemites in all kinds of unexpected nooks and crannies. Indeed, quite a few people have been exposed when even they themselves did not know they were antisemites.

So, when it's so difficult and complicated to diagnose just who the anti-Semites are, how can a first year student, harassed with preparing for difficult examinations, develop the unique sense of smell needed to scent out the hidden antisemite?

No worry! The government of Israel is providing to all and sundry, free of charge, a comprehensive preparation course guaranteed to make you a world class expert on antisemitism at record speed. What exactly will be learned in such courses? Well, the precise curriculum has not been published, but we can get some idea from the remarks of senior cabinet ministers and government officials.

For example, this week it was published that Prof. Yaakov Neeman, Minister of Justice in the government of Israel, called "Haaretz" newspaper by the name "Der Sturmer", the name of the organ of the Nazi Party under Hitler. So here, at one fell blow was discovered and exposed a dangerous antisemitic newspaper which disseminates antisemitic propaganda in Hebrew and English, in Israel and all over the world. Which creates a wide opening through which other major and minor antisemites could be located and exposed.

For example, Ha'aretz (sorry, Der Sturmer) reported on a group of five hundred nasty and rude Israeli parents, who came out in outspoken opposition to the welcome educational initiative of minister Gideon Sa'ar to have Israeli pupils go to the pioneering settlers in Hebron and Shiloh and learn from them about the glorious history of the Jewish people. Students attending the special government courses would immediately understand that these are not Israeli parents caring for their children – no, they are nothing but antisemites.

And here is another breed of these nasty antisemites, those who oppose Israeli theaters holding performances in the settlements. They went so far as the absurd suggestion that there might be a contradiction between Habimah Theater performing at settlements built in Occupied Territory and the same theater appearing at a prestigious international Shakespeare festival. Because of these antisemites there is now an intense debate going on at the site of the Globe Theatre in London - certainly a place where courageous and determined Israeli students can show their mettle.

And yet another example - the British Internet sites attacking such a great and wonderful institution as the Jewish National Fund. They dare to question the JNF's well-known role in making the desert bloom. Rather, those antisemites assert that the JNF is holding on to thirteen percent of Israel's territory and is willing to lease them only and exclusively to Jews and to nobody else, and that this is explicitly set out in the JNF's regulations and bylaws. And they further assert that the JNF is sending bulldozers to destroy Bedouin houses in Al-Arakib in order to plant a forest where they had been. Only antisemites can come up with such nasty accusations against good old JNF, and even get 76 Members of the British Parliament to demand that the issue be debated in the House. Clearly, dedicated Israeli students must immediately wade in and disprove all these nasty lies, once and for all.

Who is still interested in Kindergartens?

Facing Both Ways - The Lies & Dishonesty of Gilad Atzmon

2012-01-08T23:16:00.003Z

According to Atzmon the Zionist Community Security Trust Denounced Jewish Zionists to the Israeli Government!

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive” wrote Sir Walter Scott. Such is the situation of Gilad Atzmon. In an article on Atzmon's blog of 26th December, Asa Winstanley-UK charity with Mossad links secretly denounced anti-Zionist Jews to government there is a photomontage of 5 Jewish anti-Zionists – Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and myself of J-Big, Sara Kershnar and Mich Levy of IJAN and Roland Rance, with a caption ‘the anti-Zionist Zionists’.

This story began with the failure of the British Government, through its own incompetence, to prevent the entry of Raed Salah, a leader of Israel’s Islamic movement into Britain on 25th June 2011, despite having banned him. Three days later he was arrested and on 26th October 2011 there was a hearing of the First Tier Immigration & Asylum Tribunal in Birmingham into the appeal by Raed Salah against the British government’s attempt to deport him. At present their decision to uphold the Government's decision is being appealed.

Atzmon faced a dilemma. According to him, Jewish anti-Zionists are, by definition, Zionists. In 'Not in my name' he wrote that:

'To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy …. Jews cannot criticise Zionism in the name of their ethnic belonging because such an act is in itself an approval of Zionism.'

Why then should one set of Zionists seek to expose another set, the CST? Doesn’t make sense. Atzmon admits, since he has no alternative, that:

‘it seems [my emphasis of the weasel word!] the CST disseminates false information-it produces ‘evidence’ of Holocaust denial and anti Semitism, it vilifies and harasses some Jewish anti Zionists such as Naomi Wimborne Idrissi, Tony Greenstein, IJAN, Torah Jews and others most notably Sheik Raed Salah.’

But then he alleges that

‘Jewish anti Zionists use the exact defamatory tactics against some devoted solidarity activists and thinkers. Like the CST, Greenstein, Idrissi and IJAN also disseminate lies, they falsify documents, they engage in constant harassment of solidarity campaigners whom they don’t agree with.’

But what possible reason could the CST have for villifying and harassing fellow Zionists who are engaged in the same tactics against Palestine solidarity campaigners as they are? Naturally Atzmon provides no answers.

Atzmon describes Asa Winstanley’s article UK government conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism in Salah trial on Electronic Intifada as an ‘outstanding and comprehensive expose’, which it is. What he ‘forgets’ to quote is the section of Asa Winstanley’s article, which states:

‘Although perhaps most famous for its role in recording anti-Semitic incidents, and providing security for the UK Jewish community, the CST has been accused by some in that community of having a deeply pro-Israel agenda. Tony Greenstein, an anti-Zionist activist and blogger with a strong record of criticizing anti-Semites, has written about occasions when CST security have removed or barred Jewish anti-Zionists from public meetings. Greenstein also says the CST refused to record an anti-Semitic attack left on his blog because the commenter was a Zionist.' (see “CST Thugs Violently Eject 2 Jewish People from Zionist ‘Environmental’ Meeting”, “Community Security Thugs Bar Jewish Opponents of Gaza War from Liberal Judaism Meeting” and “When is an anti-semitic attack not anti-semitic? When it’s a Zionist who is being anti-Jewish,”

This blog has been one of the very few, as a Google search will confirm, to have researched in any depth the shadowy CST, an organisation which works very closely with British State, the Metropolitan and Greater Manchester Police in particular. It is also no secret that it supplies and received information and support from the Israeli Embassy and Israeli Intelligence Services.

I undertook in-depth research of the accounts of the donations of all Jewish charities when researching the financing of the CST, not least the support of right-wing Jewish and Zionist businessman Gerald Ronson, who was sentenced to one-years imprisonment in the Guinness Affair for fraud and theft. We have carried an article of Asa Winstanley on the support of Richard Desmond, who was Britain’s major pornographer, as well as proprietor of the Daily Express and Star for both the CST and the EDL. Desmond’s newspapers have consistently supported both the anti-Islamic politics of the English Defence League including its efforts to set up a new fascist party in Britain.

It was therefore doubly welcome when Asa Winstanley took this issue up, as part of his coverage of the treatment of Raed Salah, and wrote a series of excellent articles.
UK government conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism in Salah trial

EI exclusive: UK charity with Mossad links secretly denounced anti-Zionist Jews to government
Daily Express’s porn baron owner donated thousands to anti-Palestinian group CST

In the last article on Richard Desmond, Asa Winstanley paid generous tribute to the articles on this blog concerning the CST: ‘Thanks to Tony Greenstein whose blog post on the CST’s finances gave me the idea for this post.

But to Atzmon all this is a bit confusing. In his article he writes that

‘As horrific as it may sound, once again we detect a clear and devastating continuum between the militant Zionists and the so- called Jewish Anti Zionists AKA Anti Zionist Zionists. Is it really too much to expect Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists to adopt some basic humanist manners? Is it really too much to expect them to be substantially different from Israel’s Sayanim?’

Sayanim are the unpaid helpers that Israel’s Mossad uses from indigenous Jewish communities. At the same time as I have apparently been working for Israeli Intelligence as a ‘sayan’ I have been one of the few people to expose and investigate a key organisation that Israeli Intelligence works with! Such is the weird and wonderful world of Gilad Atzmon and the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists!

Holocaust Denial and anti-Semitism Have No Place in PSC

2012-01-02T00:23:00.009Z

Opposition to ALL Forms of Racism is a Core Principle of Palestine Solidarity

When in the autumn the following statement appeared on PSC’s website I was surprised and knew nothing of the background to the events had given rise to it.

Any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust have no place in our movement. Such sentiments are abhorrent in their own right and can only detract from the building of a strong movement in support of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. We welcome all those who share our aims to join PSC.

I was surprised, not because it doesn’t reflect the overwhelming feeling of PSC members, but as to why it had appeared now. My first thoughts were that maybe this was a direct response to those who might have been attracted by Gilad Atzmon’s new book ‘The Wandering Who?’. [for reviews see Tony Greenstein’s anti-Semitism in anti-Zionist Garb, Gabriel Ash’s review on Amazon and Elias Davidson’s review.

What had happened was that in a series of branches up and down the country, as reflected in the Liverpool Branch Forum, supporters of Gilad Atzmon had deliberately tried to refocus campaigning activity from support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism to ‘Jewish Identity’ and hostility to Jews in the movement. According to Atzmon’s thesis, a direct line can be traced between Moses and Joshua and Israel’s policies today and the Judaic god responsible for these policies. No matter that Moses and Joshua probably never even existed.

As Atzmon explained on p.19 of ‘The Wandering Jew’: in a sub-section entitled ‘‘Zionism, a Global Network’

Zionism is not a colonial movement with an interest in Palestine, as some scholars suggest. Zionism is actually a global movement that is fuelled by a unique tribal solidarity of third category members. To be a Zionist means to accept that, more than anything else, one is primarily a Jew.’

The reaction from Atzmon and his supporters to PSC’s statement was predictable and hysterical. Atzmon denounced the statement because, as he has repeatedly made clear, there is no such thing as holocaust denial. PSC Has Made It. Lauren Booth’s attack was both unhinged and venomous - Palestine Solidarity Campaign was in unholy alliance with Israeli mouthpiece and UK Zionist website Harry’s Place and Sarah Colborne, Director of PSC, who had been one of those aboard the Mavi Marmara, had ‘descended into the Zionist sewer.’

The Zionists have just loved the antics of Atzmon and the fact that a few members of PSC have given him their support. Indeed it is only because some of us have untiringly sought to expose the true nature of Atzmon’s policies (not only anti-Semitic, but according to a hint of his erstwhile collaborator Mary Rizzo, someone who keeps company with Israel’s Mossad).

The Jewish Chronicle has however been forced to admit that Atzmon’s anti-Semitism has been vigorously opposed within PSC, albeit wrongly attributing it solely to Jewish members of PSC and PSC Executive. Even Alan Dershowitz, whose justifications of everything that Israel does are notorious, was forced to concede that Atzmon has been opposed by those such as Sue Blackwell and myself.

In a quite remarkably fair minded article, (by Jewish Chronicle standards!) The Jews who can distinguish antisemitism from anti-Israel reprinted on Harry’s Place, Anthony Cooper concedes that:

‘very few anti-Israel Jews are self-hating. We should recognise this and make sure to keep them within the big tent against antisemitism rather than making them pariahs. They may be opponents of Israel but they can be our allies in the struggle against antisemitism.

An example are the Jews of the PSC. The PSC is a leading force in delegitimisation, using trade unions to advance its call to boycott all things related to Israel… Many believe the organisation is incapable of distinguishing between criticism of Israeli actions and antisemitism.

However, during the last 12 months there has been something of a mini-purge of the organisation. Some previously important members have been forced to resign because of their antisemitism. Those effectively expelled from the PSC include a former national chair, the chair of one branch, the secretary of another and the webmaster of a third.

Behind all these resignations appear to be rank and file Jewish members with support from a Jewish member of the executive committee. While the PSC itself may be unable to work out what antisemitism looks like, its Jewish members certainly can.

We have enough enemies already. We shouldn't be looking to create more. So long as anti-Israel Jews retain their sensitivity to antisemitism we can be sure that they are neither self-hating nor hate us. They remain allies in our struggle against antisemitism and in some ways are capable of achieving results in it that the rest of us cannot.

We should thank them for that. If we don't make enemies of them, we may find that we have more friends than we thought.’

To Gilad Atzmon this is proof that ‘The ultra Zionist, pro war, Neocon Harry’s Place decided today to thank its Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist “allies”. In an astonishing piece named A (small) Thank You to Anti-Israel Jews, Zionist Mouthpiece Anthony Cooper thanks his collaborators within our midst.’ This is a good example of why Atzmon is such a simpleton who tries to dress up as profound. If Jewish anti-Zionists were indeed in some sort of conspiracy with Harry's Place, then they would hardly thank us!! Life is just a little bit more complicated and contradictory.

If you look at the comments on the piece there is almost unanimous outrage. The normal HP contributors can’t understand why anti-Zionists (their main target) have been given qualified approval in the battle against Atzmon. Doesn’t Cooper understand that the main form of ‘anti-Semitism’ is not Gilad’s anti-Jewish racism but anti-Zionism? A few, very few Zionists, are genuine in their concern to tackle anti-Semitism, but by and large they are not to be found on Harry’s Place. Historically Zionism has always justified and indeed supported anti-Semitism. (see e.g. Unholy alliance).

At the PSC AGM on January 21st there is an ideal opportunity to bury, once and for all, this attempt to sow divisions and pit Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of the Palestinians against each other. Just as the picket of Atzmon’s book launch in London in October consisted of an equal number of Jews and non-Jews so it is important that as large a number of PSC members, regardless of religion if any, oppose Atzmon and his supporters racist diversions. Mention should be made of the fact that supporters of London ISM have been particularly vocal in criticising Atzmon’s divisive activities as have nearly all supporters of the Boycott Israel Network.

Boycott campaigners know full well that Atzmon doesn’t support BDS and that he even attacked the disruption of the Israeli Philarhmonic Orchestra on September 1st thus:

‘We loved your opposition and we also loved your Jewish campaign against the Jewish philharmony is never boring you :)’

and that the academic boycott is ‘book burning’.

Motion Number 2 from the Executive should be supported by all those who are sincere in opposing racism in all its manifestations.

Likewise Motion 9 from Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and myself of J-Big should also be supported. It aims to complement the Executive motion by suggesting internal education as to the nature of Zionism, not least its colonial and non-Jewish origins.

Motion 10 is proposed by Gill Kaffash, ex-Secretary of Camden PSC. She wrote to me earlier this year asking for proof that Gilad Atzmon was anti-Semitic. When I provided it she became mysteriously quiet and tried to divert it onto issues of disability. The reason is that she is a died-in-the-wool anti-Semite and supporter of holocaust denier Paul Eisen.

In My Life as a holocaust denier Paul Eisen describes the torments he went through when he became a holocaust denier. Most people ‘simply remained silent but there were some who openly and repeatedly demonstrated their solidarity e.g. Dan McGowan, Henry Herskovitz, Gilad Atzmon, Sarah Gillespie, Israel Shamir, Francis Clark-Lowes, Gill Kaffash…’

Kaffash’s motion is, in the words of the Marquess of Salisbury when admonishing Ian McLeod ‘too clever by half’. She has devised a definition of racism that conveniently omits holocaust denial! According to her racism is something biological that results in practical discrimination. Unfortunately not only does this exclude Islamaphobia, which is primarily cultural not biological, but would exclude the ‘n’ word and other forms of racial abuse. Gill Kaffash’s ‘definition’ of racism makes about as much sense as the discredited Working Definition on anti-Semitism that the EUMC temporarily adopted before its successor the Fundamental Rights Agency dropped it. And it is about as useful!

January 21st is an opportunity to demonstrate once and for all that opposition to racism is a key component of support for the Palestinians. It is essential not merely that the motions are passed but that they are overwhelmingly passed.

Tony Greenstein

Motion 2: Combating Racism, Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism

This AGM believes that building opposition to the racist and apartheid policies carried out by Israel is a core value of the PSC, and reaffirms the anti-racist values of PSC’s constitution.

This AGM affirms that anti-racism is a core value of the PSC on which its work must be based.

This AGM recognises combating anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is critical in building alliances and support for a free Palestine – based on the principles of justice, human rights and international law.

This AGM also affirms that the code of conduct used at AGMs should be applied to all public meetings of PSC.

This AGM welcomes and endorses the statement put out by the Executive Committee that:

‘The Palestine Solidarity Campaign exists to build a mass solidarity movement on Palestine. It is founded on principles of justice, human rights, and opposition to all forms of racism. ‘Any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust have no place in our movement. Such sentiments are abhorrent in their own right and can only detract from the building of a strong movement in support of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.’

This AGM believes that the attacks on the PSC vindicate the effectiveness of our campaigning work and reaffirms our determination that this pressure will not deflect the PSC from its campaigning aims and objectives.

This AGM instructs the EC to continue to provide training and support to branches to ensure that branches and members are able to operate effectively within the PSC’s aims and objectives, and with care and vigilance to ensure good practice in our campaigns and communications.

Proposed by the Executive Committee

Motion 9: Building an anti-racist, anti-colonialist, Palestine solidarity movement – anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial

One of the most potent weapons of Zionism is the accusation that those who support the Palestinians and oppose Israel’s settler-colonial, practices are antisemites who want to see a new Holocaust against Jews.

The Zionist movement deliberately blurs the distinction between the ‘Jewish’ state and Jewish people, in order to discredit Israel's critics and cause confusion among the growing number of people whose humanitarian and anti-racist instincts make them eager to support the Palestinian cause.

Both racism and antisemitism are features of Zionism. Virtually all far-right and neo-Nazi parties today in Europe are Islamophobic and support Zionism (while often remaining antisemitic).

The Palestine solidarity movement, by its very nature, is anti-racist. To allow antisemitism or any other form of racism to gain a foothold would be to undermine the very cause that we support.

PSC AGM therefore:

1. Welcomes the statement on the PSC website explicitly asserting its commitment to building a mass solidarity movement, in which expressions of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust, have no place.

2. Confirms that support for the Palestinians and against Israel's policies is an anti-racist campaign

3. Calls on the EC to reinforce these principles by: a) organising a series of forums to build understanding of Israel as a settler-colonial, apartheid state. b) publishing educational material to develop understanding of:

-Israel’s status as a client state of US imperialism; -aspects of Zionist history, including the non-Jewish origins and Jewish opposition to Zionism, and Zionism's collusion with antisemitism -the growing alignment between the Israeli state and openly racist and fascist groups in Europe, including the English Defence League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP).

Proposed by Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Seconded by Tony Greenstein

Motion 10

PSC has been under a great deal of pressure from accusations of antisemitism. Members have also been expelled for anti-Jewish prejudice and other members have been criticised on those grounds In the light of these events, which demonstrate the importance of agreement on the meaning of racism, anti-Jewish prejudice and Islamophobia as used in the Constitution. Conference resolves to adopt the following definition: Racism, anti-Jewish prejudice and Islamophobia shall be defined as the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups or Jews or Muslims respectively, both as individuals and collectively, justify discrimination. These terms apply especially to the practice or advocacy of discrimination of a pernicious nature ie which harms these groups.

Proposed by: Gill Kaffash, seconded by Ruth Tenne

Correspondence Between Gill Kaffash and Tony Greenstein

Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:46:47 +0100
From: tonygreenstein@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London CC: gillkaffash@hotmail.com

Gilad is without doubt anti-Semitic. People who know him personally confirm that he makes regular anti-Semitic comments on a personal level, which sometimes spill over publicly. His arguments, as I've tried to explain to Gill Kaffas are now overtly ones of holocaust denial. Look, the Zionists love holocaust deniers so they can justify what they do as a form of existentialism. Why prove them right? I don't know what hold Atzmon has on you, because apart from this you are a good activist, but you really need to rethink your support of Atzmon.

…. He is a parasite on solidarity with the Palestinians. His caricatures of me and others as part of the Learned Elders of Zion etc. don't hurt me but they delight those creatures on Harry's Place.

tony

From: gill kaffash To: tony greenstein ; Sent: Mon, 2 May, 2011 22:05:23
Subject: RE: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London

Tony, I'm still awaiting an explanation. All I've received so far are assertions in the tone of Calm down dear, no discussion. I await a reasoned response.
gill

From: tony greenstein To: gill kaffash ; Sent: Mon, 2 May, 2011 22:39:14 Subject: Re: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London

Gill

I haven’t told you to calm down, nor called you ‘dear’ ‘expensive’ or cheap for that matter. Your demeanour is a matter of no concern to me. You say you are awaiting an explanation.

I sent to you by attachment an article I had written ‘The Definitive Guide to Atzmon’. I’ll send it to you again in case you either didn’t receive it or understand it. But if you didn’t understand it then no amount of explanation will be of any help. And for someone who is not politically naïve, who is an activist, who has been through all the debates, not to be able to work it out for herself suggests that this is more a ploy.

However I will take you at your word and see whether you are still going to pretend you don’t understand or that the explanation has not been provided.

Firstly Atzmon in all his writings seeks to identify the cause of the Palestinian’s plight on a mysterious quality called ‘Jewishness’ which is a metaphysical substance that doesn’t and never has existed, any more than any identity is fixed. But in his case it is a metaphor for racism. Zionism in Atzmon’s eyes is the consequence of being Jewish. And in that respect the Zionists are right, hence his fulsome welcome for Anthony Julius’ attacks on Jewish anti-Zionists. They mirrored his own. Atzmon explicitly rejects, as do right-wing supporters of the Palestinians, the concept of colonialism or imperialism. In short it is the Jews who are to blame. If you find that an attractive analysis so be it. If you don’t then read the whole of his article ‘Not in my Name’ which I’ve given links to and isn’t hard to find. ‘Jewish’ is as elusive as the German Volk and the concept of what it mean to be an Aryan.

If you find the following attactive then fine. But then you are not an anti-Zionist. It is clear that for Atzmon being Jewish means automatically being a Zionist. He also therefore writes off Israeli anti-Zionists who dare to remain Jewish.

'While Zionism appointed itself from its early days to talk and to act on behalf of the Jewish people, it is actually the sporadic rebels who criticise Zionism in the name of their Jewish secular identity who affirm the Zionist ‘totalitarian’ agenda. Bizarrely enough, it is the Jewish Left which turns Zionism into the official voice of the Jewish people…. To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy. To resist Zionism as a secular Jew involves an acceptance of basic Zionist terminology, that is to say, a surrendering to Jewish racist and nationalist philosophy. To talk as a Jew is to surrender to Weizman’s Zionist philosophy.
Bizarre yes, but also profoundly reactionary and Zionist.

Secondly, just on a personal level, whether it’s his little remarks like ‘Socialist Jewnity’ or his attack on ‘Jewish Marxism’ he is anti-Semitic. As I detail in the article, there was the little incident when Atzmon had to make a humiliating apology when he cited in his article ‘Credit Crunch or rather Zio Punch’, [the Jews are to blame for the financial crisis] John Reynolds, who wrote that "Above all we need more individuals to make a stand. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York should go further and call for more Christians to work in the city."

However Atzmon chose to put his own interpretation on Reynold’s words:

'One may wonder what Reynolds refers to when calling for more ‘Christians to work in the City’... By pleading the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to send more Christians to the City he may try to suggest to us that our financial world must be spiritually de-Judified. I must admit that it took me by complete surprise to read such a suggestion in the politically correct Guardian.’

His apology swiftly followed:

‘Clarification: In the course of an article entitled "Credit Crunch or rather Zio Punch?" I recently made a comment about Mr John Reynolds, the Chief Executive of Reynolds Partners and chairman of the Ethical Investment Advisory Group. I suggested that some people may think that his call in The Observer to send more Christians to the City was a plea for the financial world to be "spiritually de-Judified". I want to make it clear that I did not intend to suggest that Mr Reynolds was anti-Semitic or in any way hostile to Jewish people or those of the Jewish faith and I am sorry if my comment was understood by anybody in that way. Mr Reynolds has asked me to clarify the position and I am happy to do so. I would like to apologise for any distress caused.’
Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 01:46:31 +0100

Strange that Atzmon should have had to apologise for having suggested that Mr Reynolds was anti-Semitic. What connection is there between calling for a ‘spiritual de-Judification’ and anti-Semitism? Enlighten me Gill.

Thirdly he has gone from what one might call holocaust skepticism to acceptance that the holocaust is a myth. I assume you don’t subscribe to this but the quotes I have given, and again read the whole article, are quite explicit:

In ‘Truth, History, and Integrity’ Atzmon leaves no room for misunderstanding. ‘If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich…, or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?’ …

‘If the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?'
Do you really want an explanation of the above Gill? I would have thought a reasonably intelligent child would be able to decipher them. Certainly you will be able to understand them even if you purport not to do so.

Tony Greenstein

Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 01:46:31 +0100
From: tonygreenstein@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London To: gillkaffash@hotmail.com Gill,

you said you were still waiting for an explanation. I sent it to you nearly a week ago. Since then, silence.

Do you find it difficult to understand or to accept that Atzmon's views are clearly racist and anti-Semitic?

I thought the explanation was quite simple. At least I made it as simple as possible for you. Clearly I failed.

And I am only as good as the information I get. If Alan Hart lied to Naomi then the fault lies elsewhere. In any other forum, the fact that 2 or one's 3 fellow speakers decided not to speak alongside and only an eccentric ex-BBC man did so might impinge upon your consciousness. Obviously not.

tony greenstein

From: gill kaffash To: tony greenstein Sent: Sat, 7 May, 2011 23:54:03 Subject: RE: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London

Ah, Tony, I see I'll have to dumb down my insults to the level of yours. What I won't do is use any disability as an insult, which I find abhorrent. You assume correctly that I have adequate eyesight and literacy to read what you send. Therefore, you are using visual impairment and illliteracy as an insult.

In a previous constitution, PSC had discrimination against disability among the expellable crimes. At some point, the list was shortened to racism and anti-semitism; Islamophobia was not included until I put in an amendment, via Camden PSC. Is this not curious? In this grossly Islamophobic society with institutional Islamophobia rife, an organisation pledged to support a nation in which Muslims are the majority, did not think to require that its members oppose that discrimination.

I have devised a rule to help those like me who are puzzled about the use of Jew.
If a Zionist is a Jew, it is anti-semitic to mention it; if an anti-Zionist is a Jew, it is mandatory to point it out.
Gill

Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 01:16:24 +0100 From: tonygreenstein@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London To: gillkaffash@hotmail.com

Gill

I am not aware of having impugned your eyesight or ability to read. It's your ability to understand what is written i.e. stupidity that is the problem. Or should it be unconstitutional to mention such matters?

So I know it's therefore going to be impossible for you to understand this but it's quite simple. It's not anti-Semitic to mention that many Zionists are Jewish. That is a matter of fact. It's the purpose to which you put that fact.

Clearly you don't find the questioning of the existence of Auschwitz or the death camps anti-Semitic or you would have commented on the Atzmon quotes I sent you. Although tempting to say it is a product of your (lack of) intelligence it's probably fairer to say that it's a consequence of your reactionary and racist politics

Clear now?

Tony Greenstein

RE: Gilad Atzmon: Drama in London FROM: gill kaffash TO: tony greenstein Sunday, 8 May 2011, 13:11
Tony, it is not my eyesight or literacy which I am writing about; it is your use of visual impairment or illiteracy as a sign of stupidity which I am objecting to. In response to my request for a reasoned reply, you wrote " ...are you visually impaired or can't you read? " Later, you wrote suggesting there was something wrong with my eyesight and pitying me for it. Of course you know I am able to read, so you were using it as an insult. The insult is not to me but to those people with visual impairment or literacy problems. You were using those phrases as a way of calling me stupid, ie you were calling the blind and illiterate stupid.
You have also misunderstood my witticism on the use of Jew. I was of course mocking the policing of the word by you and your fellow McCarthyite Jews.

However, delightful as this correspondence has been, we all have better uses for our time. So call me a Holcaust Denier and anti-semite. I'll accept the labels and get on with my work.
Gill

>>Tony, I'm still awaiting an explanation. All I've received so far are assertions in the tone of Calm down dear, no discussion. I await a reasoned response.
gill

The TUC Pays Out Libel Damages for False Accusation

2012-01-01T20:41:00.003Z

TUC Accepts that Allegation of Acting as a Charitable Trustee Whilst Bankrupt was Without Foundation

In the mid-1980’s there were over 250 unemployed centres in Britain. Today a mere handful are left, probably less than 20%. I say probably, because no one, not least the TUC knows how many. So you can imagine how I felt when opening the TUC Handbook for 2011 to see that we weren’t even listed. This was only our 30th anniversary!

Even worse, the South-East Region of the TUC, which prints its own handbook, had decided not to list any unemployed centres. When I raised these matters with the Secretary of SERTUC Megan Dobney the matter was dismissed as being of no consequence.

Suffice to say heated words were exchanged. Next thing I knew a letter was sent to the Secretary of Brighton & Hove Trades Council Bill North containing an allegation that I was acting as trustees of a charity whilst a bankrupt. A criminal offence. Naturally I was appalled and the letter contained a threat to the Trades Council that if they didn’t reign us in then they too could find themselves being subject to unspecified disciplinary proceedings, which was a rerun of the 1930’s when the TUC threatened to derecognise the Trades Council if they continued to allow the affiliation of the local branch of the National Unemployed Workers Movement.

At that time the NUWM was controlled by members of the Communist Party. Today they are in the leadership of SERTUC! Plus ca change.

The TUC of course isn’t known for its advocacy of the struggle for workers’ rights and at the present time is engaged in trying to sell out the Pensions struggle. Having been a cofounder of the Unemployed Centre back in 1981 I wasn’t overjoyed that the TUC had given legs to a rumour without any foundation.

I therefore felt I had no alternative but to don my wig and gown and head off, Rumpole like, to the Royal Courts of Justice seeking justice. The TUC clearly doesn’t provide for anything in the way of an effective complaints system. After having launched proceedings for libel and defamation, I offered an out-of-court settlement for £3,000. Instead of grasping at the olive branch I had extended, the TUC preferred to instruct libel lawyers Russell, Jones & Walker who informed me that the TUC would be defending the case, not on the basis that the allegations were true but because it was covered by what is known as qualified privilege. However the letter sent to the TUC by Ms Dobney went on to make various perjorative comments concerning my good self, thus destroying the alleged privilege they were claiming.

Come November, when I had redrafted my Particulars of Claim, the TUC decided to accept my original offer, which included retraction of the original libellous letter and an apology for the distress and hurt which I had suffered.

In the past 30 years the TUC has not contributed one penny to the running of the Unemployed Centre. Indeed it bears a large responsibility for the collapse or divorce of the remaining centres. When we were formed back in 1981 they made recognition contingent upon accepting money with strings from the Manpower Services Commission. We were one of the few centres to refuse to accept their dictat. We were not a retraining centre but somewhere the unemployed could use to organise from. At the same time the TUC and its constituent affiliated unions must have spent untold millions subsidising New Labour’s attack on the rights of the working class and unemployed, so it is particularly gratifying to receive this unexpected boost to our funds. Not that this is the first time that Messrs, Sue, Grabbit & Runne have had to done their judicial garb as David Aaronovitch is more than aware!

Tony Greenstein

How Israel Created Hamas

2011-12-31T00:36:00.004Z

Islamic Fundamentalism - A Creation of Zionism and US Imperialism

But for the deliberate actions of Israel’s Shin Bet, internal security police, there would have been no Hamas. This is Israel’s dark and dirty secret. What Uri Avnery, a former member of Israel’s Knesset and veteran peacenik (albeit still a Zionist) speaks about has long been known. Avi Shlaim touched upon it. [The Iron Wall, 459, 2001]. So have other commentators.

This was a time when the United States was backing Islamic Fundamentalism in Afghanistan Anyone remember the James Bond film, Living Daylights, where the Islamic fighter was the hero? No, that’s not surprising, it quickly became out of date as the Islamists proved, as they had been intended to prove, the most useful enemy that US imperialism and Zionism could have.

For years Israel backed Muslim patriarchs against younger nationalists inside Israel. This was particularly marked in the years 1948-66 when Israel's Arab population was under military rule.

Hamas were created as a secular counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism. This has always been their role. Political religious movements are always reactionary. They use the past, or what they image to be the past, to control the present and preserve the economic and political interests of the clerics and their supporters. Democracy even in its western form is unheard of. The masses can never be trusted. Insteady people should rely on clerics, mullahs and rabbis to ‘interpret’ the word of a non-existent god. Religion, because it is based on faith not reason, is the best means of legitimising repression as Iran today demonstrates.

Below are a number of articles including that of Avnery, How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas
by Andrew Higgins of the Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2009 and Brendan O’Neill, a libertarian conservative commentator and former writer for LM.

So when Zionists shout out about how wicked and anti-Semitic Hamas is, then the obvious riposte is ‘why did you create it then’?

Tony Greenstein

The Throw-Back of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, to Their Dark Ages: what part did Israel play in this to its own peril?

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on December 30th, 2011 by Pincas Jawetz
Uri Avnery’s Column
Shukran, Israel, 31/12/11

IF ISLAMIST movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bete noire, Israel.

Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams.

That is true in Gaza, in Beirut, in Cairo and even in Tehran.
——————
LET’S TAKE the example of Hamas.

All over the Arab lands, dictators have been faced with a dilemma. They could easily close down all political and civic activities, but they could not close the mosques. In the mosques people could congregate in order to pray, organize charities and, secretly, set up political organizations. Before the days of Twitter and Facebook, that was the only way to reach masses of people.
One of the dictators faced with this dilemma was the Israel military governor in the occupied Palestinian territories. Right from the beginning, he forbade any political activity. Even peace activists went to prison. Advocates of non-violence were deported. Civic centers were closed down. Only the mosques remained open. There people could meet.

But this went beyond tolerance. The General Security Service (known as Shin Bet or Shabak) had an active interest in the flourishing of the mosques. People who pray five times a day, they thought, have no time to build bombs.

The main enemy, as laid down by Shabak, was the dreadful PLO, led by that monster, Yasser Arafat. The PLO was a secular organization, with many prominent Christian members, aiming at a “nonsectarian” Palestinian state. They were the enemies of the Islamists, who were talking about a pan-Islamic Caliphate.

Turning the Palestinians towards Islam, it was thought, would weaken the PLO and its main faction, Fatah. So everything was done to help the Islamic movement discreetly.
It was a very successful policy, and the Security people congratulated themselves on their cleverness, when something untoward happened. In December 1987, the first intifada broke out. The mainstream Islamists had to compete with more radical groupings. Within days, they transformed themselves into the Islamic Resistance Movement (acronym Hamas) and became the most dangerous foes of Israel. Yet it took Shabak more than a year before they arrested Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the Hamas leader. In order to fight this new menace, Israel came to an agreement with the PLO in Oslo.

And now, irony of ironies, Hamas is about to join the PLO and take part in a Palestinian National Unity government. They really should send us a message of Shukran (“thanks”).
——————————————
OUR PART in the rise of Hizbollah is less direct, but no less effective.
When Ariel Sharon rolled into Lebanon in 1982, his troops had to cross the mainly Shiite South. The Israeli soldiers were received as liberators. Liberators from the PLO, which had turned this area into a state within a state.

Following the troops in my private car, trying to reach the front, I had to traverse about a dozen Shiite villages. In each one I was detained by the villagers, who insisted that I have coffee in their homes.

Neither Sharon nor anyone else paid much attention to the Shiites. In the federation of autonomous ethnic-religious communities that is called Lebanon, the Shiites were the most downtrodden and powerless.
However, the Israelis outstayed their welcome. It took the Shiites just a few weeks to realize that they had no intention of leaving. So, for the first time in their history, they rebelled. The main political group, Amal (“hope”), started small armed actions. When the Israelis did not take the hint, operations multiplied and turned into a full-fledged guerrilla war.

To outflank Amal, Israel encouraged a small, more radical, rival: God’s Party, Hizbollah.
If Israel had got out then (as Haolam Hazeh demanded), not much harm would have been done. But they remained for a full 18 years, ample time for Hizbollah to turn into an efficient fighting machine, earn the admiration of the Arab masses everywhere, take over the leadership of the Shiite community and become the most powerful force in Lebanese politics.
They, too, owe us a big Shukran.
—————————————

THE CASE of the Muslim Brotherhood is even more complex.

The organization was founded in 1928, twenty years before the State of Israel. Its members volunteered to fight us in 1948. They are passionately pan-Islamic, and the Palestinian plight is close to their hearts.

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worsened, the popularity of the Brothers grew. Since the 1967 war, in which Egypt lost Sinai, and even more after the separate peace agreement with Israel, they stoked the deep-seated resentment of the masses in Egypt and all over the Arab world. The assassination of Anwar al-Sadat was not of their doing, but they rejoiced.

Their opposition to the peace agreement with Israel was not only an Islamist, but also an authentic Egyptian reaction. Most Egyptians felt cheated and betrayed by Israel. The Camp David agreement had an important Palestinian component, without which the agreement would have been impossible for Egypt. Sadat, a visionary, looked at the big picture and believed that the agreement would quickly lead to a Palestinian state. Menachem Begin, a lawyer, saw to the fine print. Generations of Jews have been brought up on the Talmud, which is mainly a compilation of legal precedents, and their mind has been honed by legalistic arguments. Not for nothing are Jewish lawyers in demand the world over.

Actually, the agreement made no mention of a Palestinian state, only of autonomy, phrased in a way that allowed Israel to continue the occupation. That was not what the Egyptians had been led to believe, and their resentment was palpable. Egyptians are convinced that their country is the leader of the Arab world, and bears a special responsibility for every part of it. They cannot bear to be seen as the betrayers of their poor, helpless Palestinian cousins.
Long before he was overthrown, Hosni Mubarak was despised as an Israeli lackey, paid by the US. For Egyptians, his despicable role in the Israeli blockade of a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was particularly shameful.

Since their beginnings in the 1920s, Brotherhood leaders and activists have been hanged, imprisoned, tortured and otherwise persecuted. Their anti-regime credentials are impeccable. Their stand for the Palestinians contributed a lot to this image.

Had Israel made peace with the Palestinian people somewhere along the line, the Brotherhood would have lost much of its luster. As it is, they are emerging from the present democratic elections as the central force in Egyptian politics.
Shukran, Israel.
————————————

LET’S NOT forget the Islamic Republic of Iran. They owe us something, too. Quite a lot, actually.
In 1951, in the first democratic elections in an Islamic country in the region, Muhammad Mossadeq was elected Prime Minister. The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been installed by the British during World War II, was thrown out, and Mossadeq nationalized the country’s vital oil industry. Until then, the British had robbed the Iranian people, paying a pittance for the Black Gold.

Two years later, in a coup organized by the British MI6 and the American CIA, the Shah was brought back and returned the oil to the hated British and their partners. Israel had probably no part in the coup, but under the restored regime of the Shah, Israel prospered. Israelis made fortunes selling weapons to the Iranian army. Israeli Shabak agents trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police, Savak. It was widely believed that they also taught them torture techniques. The Shah helped to build and pay for a pipeline for Iranian oil from Eilat to Ashkelon. Israeli generals traveled through Iran to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they helped the rebellion against Baghdad.

At the time, the Israeli leadership was cooperating with the South African apartheid regime in developing nuclear arms. The two offered the Shah partnership in the effort, so that Iran, too, would become a nuclear power.

Before that partnership became effective, the detested ruler was overthrown by the Islamic revolution of February 1979. Since then, the hatred of the Great Satan (the US) and the Little Satan (us) has played a major role in the propaganda of the Islamic regime. It has helped to keep the loyalty of the masses, and now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using it to bolster his rule.
It seems that all Iranian factions – including the opposition – now support the Iranian effort to obtain a nuclear bomb of their own, ostensibly to deter an Israeli nuclear attack. (This week, the chief of the Mossad pronounced that an Iranian nuclear bomb would not constitute an “existential danger” to Israel.)

Where would the Islamic Republic be without Israel? So they owe us a big “Thank you”, too. HOWEVER, LET us not be too megalomaniac. Israel has contributed a lot to the Islamist awakening. But it is not the only – or even the main – contributor.

Strange as it may appear, obscurantist religious fundamentalism seems to express the Zeitgeist. An American nun-turned-historian, Karen Armstrong, has written an interesting book following the three fundamentalist movements in the Muslim world, in the US and in Israel. It shows a clear pattern: all these divergent movements – Muslim, Christian and Jewish – have passed through almost identical and simultaneous stages.

At present, all Israel is in turmoil because the powerful Orthodox community is compelling women in many parts of the country to sit separately in the back of buses, like blacks in the good old days in Alabama, and use separate sidewalks on one side of the streets. Male religious soldiers are forbidden by their rabbis to listen to women soldiers singing. In orthodox neighborhoods, women are compelled to swathe their bodies in garments that reveal nothing but their faces and hands, even in temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius and above. An 8-year old girl from a religious family was spat upon in the street because her clothes were not “modest” enough. In counter-demonstrations, secular women waved posters saying “Tehran is Here!”
—————————————
Perhaps some day a fundamentalist Israel will make peace with a fundamentalist Muslim world, under the auspices of a fundamentalist American president.

Unless we do something to stop the process before it is too late.

How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas

By ANDREW HIGGINS
Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2009

Moshav Tekuma, Israel

Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

Last Saturday, after 22 days of war, Israel announced a halt to the offensive. The assault was aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from falling on Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hailed a "determined and successful military operation." More than 1,200 Palestinians had died. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.

Hamas responded the next day by lobbing five rockets towards the Israeli town of Sderot, a few miles down the road from Moshav Tekuma, the farming village where Mr. Cohen lives. Hamas then announced its own cease-fire.

Since then, Hamas leaders have emerged from hiding and reasserted their control over Gaza. Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at a more durable truce are expected to start this weekend. President Barack Obama said this week that lasting calm "requires more than a long cease-fire" and depends on Israel and a future Palestinian state "living side by side in peace and security."
A look at Israel's decades-long dealings with Palestinian radicals -- including some little-known attempts to cooperate with the Islamists -- reveals a catalog of unintended and often perilous consequences. Time and again, Israel's efforts to find a pliant Palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence, have backfired. Would-be partners have turned into foes or lost the support of their people.

Israel's experience echoes that of the U.S., which, during the Cold War, looked to Islamists as a useful ally against communism. Anti-Soviet forces backed by America after Moscow's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan later mutated into al Qaeda.

Hamas supporters in Gaza City after the cease-fire.

At stake is the future of what used to be the British Mandate of Palestine, the biblical lands now comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1948, when the state of Israel was established, Israelis and Palestinians have each asserted claims over the same territory.

The Palestinian cause was for decades led by the PLO, which Israel regarded as a terrorist outfit and sought to crush until the 1990s, when the PLO dropped its vow to destroy the Jewish state. The PLO's Palestinian rival, Hamas, led by Islamist militants, refused to recognize Israel and vowed to continue "resistance." Hamas now controls Gaza, a crowded, impoverished sliver of land on the Mediterranean from which Israel pulled out troops and settlers in 2005.

When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.
"When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake," says David Hacham, who worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early '90s as an Arab-affairs expert in the Israeli military. "But at the time nobody thought about the possible results."

Israeli officials who served in Gaza disagree on how much their own actions may have contributed to the rise of Hamas. They blame the group's recent ascent on outsiders, primarily Iran. This view is shared by the Israeli government. "Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons," Mr. Olmert said last Saturday. Hamas has denied receiving military assistance from Iran.

Arieh Spitzen, the former head of the Israeli military's Department of Palestinian Affairs, says that even if Israel had tried to stop the Islamists sooner, he doubts it could have done much to curb political Islam, a movement that was spreading across the Muslim world. He says attempts to stop it are akin to trying to change the internal rhythms of nature: "It is like saying: 'I will kill all the mosquitoes.' But then you get even worse insects that will kill you...You break the balance. You kill Hamas you might get al Qaeda."

When it became clear in the early 1990s that Gaza's Islamists had mutated from a religious group into a fighting force aimed at Israel -- particularly after they turned to suicide bombings in 1994 -- Israel cracked down with ferocious force. But each military assault only increased Hamas's appeal to ordinary Palestinians. The group ultimately trounced secular rivals, notably Fatah, in a 2006 election supported by Israel's main ally, the U.S.

Now, one big fear in Israel and elsewhere is that while Hamas has been hammered hard, the war might have boosted the group's popular appeal. Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, came out of hiding last Sunday to declare that "God has granted us a great victory."

Most damaged from the war, say many Palestinians, is Fatah, now Israel's principal negotiating partner. "Everyone is praising the resistance and thinks that Fatah is not part of it," says Baker Abu-Baker, a longtime Fatah supporter and author of a book on Hamas.

A Lack of Devotion

Hamas traces its roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group set up in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood believed that the woes of the Arab world spring from a lack of Islamic devotion. Its slogan: "Islam is the solution. The Quran is our constitution." Its philosophy today underpins modern, and often militantly intolerant, political Islam from Algeria to Indonesia.

After the 1948 establishment of Israel, the Brotherhood recruited a few followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, but secular activists came to dominate the Palestinian nationalist movement.

At the time, Gaza was ruled by Egypt. The country's then-president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a secular nationalist who brutally repressed the Brotherhood. In 1967, Nasser suffered a crushing defeat when Israel triumphed in the six-day war. Israel took control of Gaza and also the West Bank.

"We were all stunned," says Palestinian writer and Hamas supporter Azzam Tamimi. He was at school at the time in Kuwait and says he became close to a classmate named Khaled Mashaal, now Hamas's Damascus-based political chief. "The Arab defeat provided the Brotherhood with a big opportunity," says Mr. Tamimi.

In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory's previous Egyptian rulers. Fatah, set up in 1964, was the backbone of the PLO, which was responsible for hijackings, bombings and other violence against Israel. Arab states in 1974 declared the PLO the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people world-wide.

A poster of the late Sheikh Yassin hangs near a building destroyed by the Israeli assault on Gaza.
The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly. In addition to launching various charity projects, Sheikh Yassin collected money to reprint the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian member of the Brotherhood who, before his execution by President Nasser, advocated global jihad. He is now seen as one of the founding ideologues of militant political Islam.

Mr. Cohen, who worked at the time for the Israeli government's religious affairs department in Gaza, says he began to hear disturbing reports in the mid-1970s about Sheikh Yassin from traditional Islamic clerics. He says they warned that the sheikh had no formal Islamic training and was ultimately more interested in politics than faith. "They said, 'Keep away from Yassin. He is a big danger,'" recalls Mr. Cohen.

Instead, Israel's military-led administration in Gaza looked favorably on the paraplegic cleric, who set up a wide network of schools, clinics, a library and kindergartens. Sheikh Yassin formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya, which was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then, in 1979, as an association. Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza, which it now regards as a hotbed of militancy. The university was one of the first targets hit by Israeli warplanes in the recent war.

Brig. General Yosef Kastel, Gaza's Israeli governor at the time, is too ill to comment, says his wife. But Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who took over as governor in Gaza in late 1979, says he had no illusions about Sheikh Yassin's long-term intentions or the perils of political Islam. As Israel's former military attache in Iran, he'd watched Islamic fervor topple the Shah. However, in Gaza, says Mr. Segev, "our main enemy was Fatah," and the cleric "was still 100% peaceful" towards Israel. Former officials say Israel was also at the time wary of being viewed as an enemy of Islam.

Mr. Segev says he had regular contact with Sheikh Yassin, in part to keep an eye on him. He visited his mosque and met the cleric around a dozen times. It was illegal at the time for Israelis to meet anyone from the PLO. Mr. Segev later arranged for the cleric to be taken to Israel for hospital treatment. "We had no problems with him," he says.

In fact, the cleric and Israel had a shared enemy: secular Palestinian activists. After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust secularists from leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, Mujama staged a violent demonstration, storming the Red Crescent building. Islamists also attacked shops selling liquor and cinemas. The Israeli military mostly stood on the sidelines.

Mr. Segev says the army didn't want to get involved in Palestinian quarrels but did send soldiers to prevent Islamists from burning down the house of the Red Crescent's secular chief, a socialist who supported the PLO.

'An Alternative to the PLO'

Clashes between Islamists and secular nationalists spread to the West Bank and escalated during the early 1980s, convulsing college campuses, particularly Birzeit University, a center of political activism.

As the fighting between rival student factions at Birzeit grew more violent, Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari, then a military intelligence officer in Gaza, says he received a call from Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint on the road out of Gaza. They had stopped a bus carrying Islamic activists who wanted to join the battle against Fatah at Birzeit. "I said: 'If they want to burn each other let them go,'" recalls Mr. Harari.

A leader of Birzeit's Islamist faction at the time was Mahmoud Musleh, now a pro-Hamas member of a Palestinian legislature elected in 2006. He recalls how usually aggressive Israeli security forces stood back and let conflagration develop. He denies any collusion between his own camp and the Israelis, but says "they hoped we would become an alternative to the PLO."
A year later, in 1984, the Israeli military received a tip-off from Fatah supporters that Sheikh Yassin's Gaza Islamists were collecting arms, according to Israeli officials in Gaza at the time. Israeli troops raided a mosque and found a cache of weapons. Sheikh Yassin was jailed. He told Israeli interrogators the weapons were for use against rival Palestinians, not Israel, according to Mr. Hacham, the military affairs expert who says he spoke frequently with jailed Islamists. The cleric was released after a year and continued to expand Mujama's reach across Gaza.

Around the time of Sheikh Yassin's arrest, Mr. Cohen, the religious affairs official, sent a report to senior Israeli military and civilian officials in Gaza. Describing the cleric as a "diabolical" figure, he warned that Israel's policy towards the Islamists was allowing Mujama to develop into a dangerous force.
"I believe that by continuing to turn away our eyes, our lenient approach to Mujama will in the future harm us. I therefore suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face," Mr. Cohen wrote.

Mr. Harari, the military intelligence officer, says this and other warnings were ignored. But, he says, the reason for this was neglect, not a desire to fortify the Islamists: "Israel never financed Hamas. Israel never armed Hamas."

Roni Shaked, a former officer of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, and author of a book on Hamas, says Sheikh Yassin and his followers had a long-term perspective whose dangers were not understood at the time. "They worked slowly, slowly, step by step according to the Muslim Brotherhood plan."

Declaring Jihad

In 1987, several Palestinians were killed in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver, triggering a wave of protests that became known as the first Intifada, Mr. Yassin and six other Mujama Islamists launched Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas's charter, released a year later, is studded with anti-Semitism and declares "jihad its path and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief."

Israeli officials, still focused on Fatah and initially unaware of the Hamas charter, continued to maintain contacts with the Gaza Islamists. Mr. Hacham, the military Arab affairs expert, remembers taking one of Hamas's founders, Mahmoud Zahar, to meet Israel's then defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin, as part of regular consultations between Israeli officials and Palestinians not linked to the PLO. Mr. Zahar, the only Hamas founder known to be alive today, is now the group's senior political leader in Gaza.

In 1989, Hamas carried out its first attack on Israel, abducting and killing two soldiers. Israel arrested Sheikh Yassin and sentenced him to life. It later rounded up more than 400 suspected Hamas activists, including Mr. Zahar, and deported them to southern Lebanon. There, they hooked up with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed A-Team of anti-Israeli militancy.

Many of the deportees later returned to Gaza. Hamas built up its arsenal and escalated its attacks, while all along maintaining the social network that underpinned its support in Gaza.
Meanwhile, its enemy, the PLO, dropped its commitment to Israel's destruction and started negotiating a two-state settlement. Hamas accused it of treachery. This accusation found increasing resonance as Israel kept developing settlements on occupied Palestinian land, particularly the West Bank. Though the West Bank had passed to the nominal control of a new Palestinian Authority, it was still dotted with Israeli military checkpoints and a growing number of Israeli settlers.

Unable to uproot a now entrenched Islamist network that had suddenly replaced the PLO as its main foe, Israel tried to decapitate it. It started targeting Hamas leaders. This, too, made no dent in Hamas's support, and sometimes even helped the group. In 1997, for example, Israel's Mossad spy agency tried to poison Hamas's exiled political leader Mr. Mashaal, who was then living in Jordan.

The agents got caught and, to get them out of a Jordanian jail, Israel agreed to release Sheikh Yassin. The cleric set off on a tour of the Islamic world to raise support and money. He returned to Gaza to a hero's welcome.

Efraim Halevy, a veteran Mossad officer who negotiated the deal that released Sheikh Yassin, says the cleric's freedom was hard to swallow, but Israel had no choice. After the fiasco in Jordan, Mr. Halevy was named director of Mossad, a position he held until 2002. Two years later, Sheikh Yassin was killed by an Israeli air strike.

Mr. Halevy has in recent years urged Israel to negotiate with Hamas. He says that "Hamas can be crushed," but he believes that "the price of crushing Hamas is a price that Israel would prefer not to pay." When Israel's authoritarian secular neighbor, Syria, launched a campaign to wipe out Muslim Brotherhood militants in the early 1980s it killed more than 20,000 people, many of them civilians.

In its recent war in Gaza, Israel didn't set the destruction of Hamas as its goal. It limited its stated objectives to halting the Islamists' rocket fire and battering their overall military capacity. At the start of the Israeli operation in December, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told parliament that the goal was "to deal Hamas a severe blow, a blow that will cause it to stop its hostile actions from Gaza at Israeli citizens and soldiers."

Walking back to his house from the rubble of his neighbor's home, Mr. Cohen, the former religious affairs official in Gaza, curses Hamas and also what he sees as missteps that allowed Islamists to put down deep roots in Gaza.

He recalls a 1970s meeting with a traditional Islamic cleric who wanted Israel to stop cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood followers of Sheikh Yassin: "He told me: 'You are going to have big regrets in 20 or 30 years.' He was right."

Making Enemies - How Israel helped to create Hamas

By Brendan O'Neill 12 February 2007

In the bloody street struggle between Hamas and Fatah for control of the Palestinian territories—a civil war in all but name—Israel is firmly pinning its hopes on a Fatah victory. It sees its old enemies in Fatah as far preferable to Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and whose members still occasionally blow themselves up on streets and buses inside the Jewish state.

Fatah has been a thorn in Israel’s side for over 40 years. It is the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization, and its name is a reverse acronym of the Arabic title Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini, which literally translates “Palestinian National Liberation Movement.” But Israel is ready to overlook all that and is making moves toward its old secular, nationalist opponents—“Arafat’s men”—in an attempt to isolate what it sees as the cosmically minded religious extremists of Hamas.

When British Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly supported Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in December and promised to donate £13 million to Fatah, he won the fulsome praise of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who thanked Blair for his “good and interesting ideas” and agreed that it is time for “moderate [Palestinian] elements to be strengthened.” To this end, Olmert hinted that more than $700 million in tax receipts currently being withheld from the Palestinian Authority on the grounds that the money might end up in the coffers of Hamas could be released if a friendlier Fatah-led government were in control. This was seen by many as Israel giving the green light to Fatah to continue facing down Hamas. According to the military wing of Hamas, Fatah has even passed details of Hamas’s “military projects” to Israel so that Israeli forces can more efficiently deal with Hamas militants.

But there is something bitterly ironic in Israel’s support for Fatah against Hamas—and it should be a lesson to governments everywhere that meddle in other states’ affairs. In the past, Israel supported Hamas against Fatah. Indeed, in the 1970s and 80s, Israel played a not insignificant role in encouraging Hamas’s emergence in the belief that such an Islamist group might help rupture support for the mass nationalist movement of Fatah. Twenty years later, Israel has switched sides, hoping that it can encourage Fatah to see off Hamas. It wants “moderate” Palestinians to take on the “extremist” Palestinians it helped create. Like America and Britain before it—both of whom have supported and armed Islamist movements in the Middle East in attempts to undermine secular nationalist parties—Israel is learning the hard way that it is one thing to let radical Islamists off the leash but quite another thing to rein them back in again. If you make monsters, you shouldn’t be surprised if they come back to bite you.

Hamas first emerged in 1987. It was formed from various charities based in the Palestinian territories with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement born in Egypt in the 1920s from which many of today’s radical Islamic sects, including al-Qaeda, have sprung. Israel allowed these Islamic charities to gain strength and influence in Palestinian areas, hoping that they would counter the influence of secular Palestinian resistance movements. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas until his death by Israeli air strike in 2004, formed Hamas as the military wing of his group the Islamic Association, which was licensed by Israel 10 years earlier. During that period, when there was open conflict between Israeli forces and Palestinian nationalists, Israeli officials gave the nod to and even indirectly funded the establishment of Islamic societies in the West Bank and Gaza that might weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization. Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, has said, “[W]e saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism.” The very Islamic groups “cultivated” by Israel in the 1970s became Hamas in the 1980s, which went on to become Israel’s biggest nightmare in the 1990s. It remains so today.

After the Six Day War of 1967, Israel began administering the West Bank, Gaza, and the Sinai Peninsula. Where the Arab nationalist forces that had previously controlled these areas were hard on Islamist activists, rightly judging them to be enemies of secular nationalism, Israel was much more lenient, even permissive in its attitude towards the Islamists. One of the first actions taken by Israel after its victory in the 1967 war was to release from prison various Muslim Brotherhood activists, including Ahmed Yassin, future founder of Hamas. Yassin and others had been jailed by the Egyptian authorities after the Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the anti-colonialist and pan-Arabist who considered political Islam a threat and an anachronism and was fairly unforgiving in his treatment of its practitioners. Israel, by contrast, sensing that such radical Islamists might be helpful in undermining Arab nationalists like the Nasser-influenced Fatah in the Palestinian territories released the Islamists from their cells and encouraged them to take root in Palestinian society.
According to Robert Dreyfuss, author of the enlightening and exhaustive book Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, political Islamism grew exponentially as Israel took control of the Palestinian territories:

Starting in 1967, the Israelis began to encourage or allow the Islamists in the Gaza and West Bank areas, among the Palestinian exiled population, to flourish. The statistics are really quite staggering. In Gaza, for instance, between 1967 and 1987, when Hamas was founded, the number of mosques tripled from 200 to 600. And a lot of that come with money flowing from outside Gaza, from wealthy conservative Islamists in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. But, of course, none of this could have happened without the Israelis casting an approving eye upon it.
It is from these Islamist roots that Hamas emerged in 1987. Dreyfuss continues
There’s plenty of evidence that the Israeli intelligence services, especially Shin Bet and the military occupation authorities, encouraged the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and the founding of Hamas [in Palestinian territories].

Indeed, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles Freeman, Shin Bet—the Israeli counter-intelligence and internal security service—knowingly created Hamas: “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO.”

A former senior CIA official recently told UPI that Israel’s duplicitous support for the Islamist groups that subsequently became Hamas was “a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.” Dreyfuss agrees, pointing out how useful it was for Israel that an Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories antagonized, in some cases violently, the mass Fatah outfit:

The Hamas organization was a bitter opponent of Palestinian nationalism and clashed repeatedly with the PLO and with Fatah, of course. And there were armed clashes on university campuses in the 1970s and 1980s, where Hamas would attack the PLO, the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], the PDFLP [Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine], and other groups, with clubs and chains. This was before guns became prominent in the Occupied Territories.

In allowing the emergence of radical Islamism, Israel was following in the footsteps of successive British and American governments and their policy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood itself, midwife to Hamas, is a creation of British colonialism. In the 1920s, the British, then the colonial rulers of Egypt, helped set up the Muslim Brotherhood as a means of keeping Egyptian nationalism and anti-colonialism in check. Dreyfuss describes the original Muslim Brotherhood as an “unabashed British intelligence front.” The mosque that served as the first headquarters of the Brotherhood, in Ismailia, Egypt, was built by the (British) Suez Canal Company. In the 1930s and 1950s, with Britain’s knowledge and tacit approval, the Brotherhood both challenged anti-colonial parties within Egypt and spread to other parts of the Near and Middle East, setting up branches in Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, where under the “approving eye” of Israel from the late 1960s to the 1980s, it eventually mutated into Hamas. Following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power in 1954, both the British and Americans viewed the Brotherhood as a useful weapon against secular nationalism and communism. In his book Sleeping With the Devil, former CIA officer Robert Baer describes the “dirty little secret” in Washington in the early 1950s, namely that “the White House looked on the Brothers as a silent ally, a secret weapon against—what else?—communism.”

Al-Qaeda itself, that most radical and obscure of Islamic sects, springs from the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden is heavily influenced by the thinking of Sayyid Qutb, a radical member of the Brotherhood. The Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second-in-command and currently the public face of al-Qaeda in its occasional grainy videos and crackly audio recordings, was first radicalized by the Muslim Brotherhood before moving on to the more radical Islamic Jihad group in 1979 and subsequently fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Indeed, in both intellectual and physical terms, al-Qaeda has benefited from Western intervention in Middle Eastern affairs. It takes its intellectual inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood, that group supported by both American and British intelligence in the early and middle 20th century, and it was physically forged in the heat of the Afghan-Soviet War, a conflict largely facilitated by American, British, and Saudi support for the Mujahideen.

In playing the same game as the Brits and Americans—the “devil’s game”—Israel created its own gravediggers. Israel’s encouragement of Hamas’s emergence to counter secular nationalism represented an attack on the idea of popular and secular democracy, so it is not surprising that Hamas retains its somewhat extreme religious leanings and suspicion of traditional politics.
From Egypt to Palestine to Afghanistan, the explicit aim of Western and Israeli support for radical Islamism has been to isolate, weaken, and ultimately destroy popular political movements that very often were based on Western ideas of democracy and progress. Israel is now trying to rein in the consequences of its earlier actions by encouraging Fatah to take on Hamas, which is a recipe for further conflict and division in the Palestinian territories.

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2011-12-30T18:22:00.006Z

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December 28, 2011

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